Normally, I try to be the guy who brings a little levity to your weekly news. Not this week. Serious faces, everyone. I need to let you in on a new and important danger that plagues our fragile earth and threatens our very way of life. This week, I'm afraid I'm the bear-er of bad tidings.
It all started last week when my friend Suzy posted a message on Facebook.
"I had the weirdest dream this morning," she began. "I dreamt that I let my dogs outside, but instead of living in Bettendorf, we had a house on a lake somewhere. The lake was frozen over and the dogs ran out on the ice, when suddenly a polar bear showed up and lunged at the dogs. I knew the ice would collapse, so all I could do was yell for the dogs to come. They outran the polar bear, but then the polar bear starting coming for ME!"
Thankfully, she woke up before the polar bear could inflict any dream-carnage. But even weirder than Suzy's dream was a comment underneath it from my friend Bill:
"I had a bear-mauling dream as well!" he posted. "It started out with bear cubs, but then mama bear showed up to do the deed, and next thing I knew, I was awake!"
Terrifying, right? How weird is it that two of my friends BOTH had dreams about being mauled by bears on the same night?
Thankfully, my nightmares are usually a little tamer. I had a dream that same night, too. In MY dream, I was DJing a wedding reception in some weird venue that was terrible. It was a fancy modern building, but it was wooden with huge vaulted ceilings, which turned the whole room into a giant echo chamber and the speakers sounded terrible no matter what I did.
So I kept struggling with the sound system, and the bride and groom kept yelling at me because it sounded so bad, and I kept trying to explain to them how it all due to the terrible architecture of the venue, but they didn't understand and blamed me for everything. At the end of the night, I had to go settle up with them, and I was afraid they were going to stiff me the payment because of how bad everything sounded. I walked out to find the couple, but instead of the bride and groom being there, it was instead... A BEAR. WHO PROCEEDED TO MAUL ME.
That's right -- for no particular reason whatsoever, killer bears played a prominent role in THREE dreams that night. This can only mean one thing, people: the great dream bear uprising is upon us. No one is safe. Somewhere in dreamland as we speak, an army of furry Freddy Kruegers is assembling. Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite OR ALLOW THE BEARS TO EAT YOUR FACE OFF. The bear in my dream was not a friendly Teddy Ruxpin type. The bear in my dream was CLEARLY hungry for face.
I'm sure there's some common sense tactics we can employ to try and thwart the onslaught. I recommend an IMMEDIATE ban on any dreams involving pick-a-nicks or pick-a-nick baskets. Beware of hidden agendas -- your dream bear may say "waka waka" or "oh, bother" or go on a scene-stealing rant about how you can prevent forest fires, but trust me -- he still wants to eat your face.
There MAY be hope for us all, though. I had the misfortune of dreaming about a bear attack, BUT I may have also dreamt up the solution. In my particularly un-bear-able subconscious saga, I was eventually able to flee from the mauling and ran back into the wedding venue, where I happened upon the manager of the place. And, because dream logic is the BEST logic of all, the manager was -- you guessed it -- acclaimed actor Richard Dreyfuss. Why he was moonlighting as a wedding planner is anyone's guess. Maybe he needed a second income to buy a bigger boat.
The bear chased me into the venue, but ended up going after Dreyfuss instead. I had managed to climb a scaffolding (because, umm, sure,) and watched in horror as the bear ate Dreyfuss far more effectively than Jaws ever managed to. But a few seconds later, the bear keeled over and fell dead. And that's when I woke up from one of the dumbest dreams in recent memory.
I often forget my dreams within minutes, which is why I leave a little notebook on my nightstand for occasions just like this. I may have never remembered this one, had I not jotted down five words at 3 a.m.: RICHARD DREYFUSS IS BEAR POISON. You're welcome, world.
There's probably little I can do to stop the great dream bear uprising. The three of us really all DID have weird bear nightmares on the same evening, which is kinda spooky. But I guess next time you're asleep and having a close encounter of the bear kind, try to climb up something tall, dream up a Dreyfuss or two, and see what happens. Mr. Holland probably won't have a good opus, but you might just survive the night.
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