I’m 34 in 1988 (my actual age at the time) and the father of a 10 year old boy who acts as if he’s 50. Each time I have the dream I find myself at the movie theatre watching Tom Hanks in Big. I wake up crying “Help me Zotlar. You’re my only hope.”
My recurring dream is being back in basic naval training at Dartmouth in the UK in 1985 - which was quite a shock to my 18-year-old system at the time. Usually, the dream involves me not having pieces of uniform or being partially unclothed or being late for a muster. This week I dreamed that I was back in naval training but I was the age I am now, or close. I was telling the (much younger than me) staff officers that I’d done this training 30 years before. “Do I really need to do it again?” They shrugged and said yes unfortunately I did need to do it again. I was resigned thinking, “Oh well, I suppose I’ll just do it again then.” As I was waking up I was calculating just how long ago it was: “Wait a minute, it wasn’t 30 years ago, it was 37 years ago.”
I wouldn't change a thing about what I've lived through. It has led me to become who I am. I certainly wouldn't want to go back in time though.
I don't really remember my dreams much. When I was younger, I would have dreams of being in accidents but waking up just as the major accident would happen.
Early in my prior career (law enforcement) I had a recurring dream that I was in a parking lot doing paperwork when a car pulled up and asked me for directions. As I started to tell them where to go, they pulled out a shotgun and shot me. I couldn’t get the car from Park into Drive to escape. Without further details, it was hyper realistic. After talking with a co-worker, I recreated the dream as I fell asleep, only this time I left the car in drive and kept my foot on the brake. When the shotgun appeared, I drove off and was able to “win” the fight. That night I had the same dream but with my modification. That was the last night I ever had the dream. From that point forward I always left my car in drive while parked and doing paperwork.
I would be afraid to change anything because I have the most wonderful wife and children and wouldn’t want to risk not having them.
Great story or dream...I guess both. Was very interesting and I was thinking....this would.make a great movie...and I wondered...has it been done before??.....and running thought my limited knowledge of films....couldn't think of anything except...Freaky Friday...but that's quite different...as in it's 2 people of different ages switching identities...and then I thought of Tom Hanks "BIG"....and realized it was the opposite. Maybe you should write a screenplay or treatment call "LITTLE"....lol. I do have a reoccuring dream...actually a nightmare.....or at least a scary anxiety dream. I work on Trains..and have this nightmare...that the train I'm suppose to be working on is leaving the station without me...and I frantically try and beat it to the next station. It's always frustrating...and always a little different each time...and filled with anxiety...and I never make it to the next station in time....to take over my train. Rgds Pete in Toronto
My recurring dream is also from elementary school age. I don't know my exact age, but I'm outside of my elementary school, looking in. There are long tall windows with stained glass. Really cool from inside when the sun is shining. But from outside, you can't see anything inside. No one can see me, but I can see them. Somehow it turns out that I'm being chased down the street outside the school. I'm running, but don't see who is chasing me. As I continue running down the street, the school leaves my view and I always wake up.
I would go back to November 1st 2021 and change one word that is affecting the rest of my life.
If I went further back in time (say the early 80's as Bill has), I wouldn't need to remember ANY sports scores. Just use all the money I could beg, borrow and steal and put them on Apple and Microsoft!
Since I was a small child (now 30) I would have this dream that my city turned abandoned and I am a around 6 or 7 years old, wondering around with a stuffed animal. I always ended up on the escarpment in my area that’s over looks Lake Ontario and Toronto. Just as I’m enjoying the view and trying to figure out where everyone is, a GIANT (Godzilla size) gorilla comes chasing after me. I am terrified and run the other way or hide. Then I see he has a red wagon and wants to pull me around in. So I get in and make a new friend. I never understood what caused it, but shortly after I would upset him somehow, and he would yell and toss me and the wagon off the top of the escarpment down into the village below. I would wake from the fall covered in sweat and panicking then realize it was just the dream again.
It was a wild ride, I often wonder what in my subconscious caused the original nightmare and why do I still have it as an adult sometimes?
Although, as an adult, I wish I had it more often. It’ll eliminate some of the work nightmares that replaced my now easy seeming childhood dreams !
My grandmother was my best friend and she would frequently pick me up just to run errands. If I could change something I’d stay home instead of going with her one Sunday afternoon in August 1964. She picked me up and we drove to town. She was going to a visitation for a friend who had died. I stayed in the car with my aunt, who was had some developmental challenges. My grandmother was hit by a car as she was walking across the street in the crosswalk with the light. Didn’t matter that she was following the rules, she was killed anyway.
If she had not picked me up she probably wouldn’t have been at that place at that time. I haven’t spent years blaming myself for this butterfly effect situation but I really wish I had had her in my life during my high school years. I was just entering 8th grade at the time. I’ve had a fine life, but I think it would have gone in a different direction. She had graduated from college in Iowa in 1922 with a degree in psychology. She was by no means a typical Iowa farm girl. I didn’t have nearly enough time to learn from her.
A different way to reach people, Instagram Reels. In about 30 minutes, over 300 views about my Understandably post. I wish I could attach a photo here but don't have the functionality.
My recurring dream happened in the 90s when my now grown children were young. Each night I dreamt that a man broke into our house and brutally raped me in front of my children while my husband was at work.
Each night I would try to change the dream, at first to get to a different place in our home before the actual rape to protect my children. Eventually I succeeded, but it took many, many weeks of "doing it wrong." Finally I kept them safe, and began trying to figure out how to keep me safe. After several months I managed to prevent the attack altogether, and the dreams stopped.
I've wondered why I didn't start with that, the prevention, and figured that it was to sort something out in real life that I had to go through in order to change. Dream symbolism is some bizarre stuff.
Snakes - More snakes - walking down a dirt road, and suddenly black snakes are in the ditches. They come roiling, bubbling towards the center of the dirt road. I won't run (not sure why not), but only walk fast. They get closer to the middle - a moving, twisting mass of black snakes. Gleaming in the sun as they move closer towards the middle. And to me.
I had a recurring dream that happened when I was 17 and ended. It played again, as in a rewind, around my 18th birthday and continued from the point it stopped during my 17th birthday. It was an anxiety stress dream about leaving my small town of 2,000 people. An auto shop, a ladder up to a grocery store, a country bumpkin family, a car lose in the woods at night, a sibling set running towards me with creepy dolls around me, and many other touch points of my rural upbringing dotted the dream. It marked an inflection point in my life trajectory as I finally went to college a few months later.
As for changing something in history? How about erasing WWII? I think we can all agree that would be a good thing for humanity.
I’m 34 in 1988 (my actual age at the time) and the father of a 10 year old boy who acts as if he’s 50. Each time I have the dream I find myself at the movie theatre watching Tom Hanks in Big. I wake up crying “Help me Zotlar. You’re my only hope.”
My recurring dream is being back in basic naval training at Dartmouth in the UK in 1985 - which was quite a shock to my 18-year-old system at the time. Usually, the dream involves me not having pieces of uniform or being partially unclothed or being late for a muster. This week I dreamed that I was back in naval training but I was the age I am now, or close. I was telling the (much younger than me) staff officers that I’d done this training 30 years before. “Do I really need to do it again?” They shrugged and said yes unfortunately I did need to do it again. I was resigned thinking, “Oh well, I suppose I’ll just do it again then.” As I was waking up I was calculating just how long ago it was: “Wait a minute, it wasn’t 30 years ago, it was 37 years ago.”
I wouldn't change a thing about what I've lived through. It has led me to become who I am. I certainly wouldn't want to go back in time though.
I don't really remember my dreams much. When I was younger, I would have dreams of being in accidents but waking up just as the major accident would happen.
9/11
Early in my prior career (law enforcement) I had a recurring dream that I was in a parking lot doing paperwork when a car pulled up and asked me for directions. As I started to tell them where to go, they pulled out a shotgun and shot me. I couldn’t get the car from Park into Drive to escape. Without further details, it was hyper realistic. After talking with a co-worker, I recreated the dream as I fell asleep, only this time I left the car in drive and kept my foot on the brake. When the shotgun appeared, I drove off and was able to “win” the fight. That night I had the same dream but with my modification. That was the last night I ever had the dream. From that point forward I always left my car in drive while parked and doing paperwork.
I would be afraid to change anything because I have the most wonderful wife and children and wouldn’t want to risk not having them.
Great story or dream...I guess both. Was very interesting and I was thinking....this would.make a great movie...and I wondered...has it been done before??.....and running thought my limited knowledge of films....couldn't think of anything except...Freaky Friday...but that's quite different...as in it's 2 people of different ages switching identities...and then I thought of Tom Hanks "BIG"....and realized it was the opposite. Maybe you should write a screenplay or treatment call "LITTLE"....lol. I do have a reoccuring dream...actually a nightmare.....or at least a scary anxiety dream. I work on Trains..and have this nightmare...that the train I'm suppose to be working on is leaving the station without me...and I frantically try and beat it to the next station. It's always frustrating...and always a little different each time...and filled with anxiety...and I never make it to the next station in time....to take over my train. Rgds Pete in Toronto
My recurring dream is also from elementary school age. I don't know my exact age, but I'm outside of my elementary school, looking in. There are long tall windows with stained glass. Really cool from inside when the sun is shining. But from outside, you can't see anything inside. No one can see me, but I can see them. Somehow it turns out that I'm being chased down the street outside the school. I'm running, but don't see who is chasing me. As I continue running down the street, the school leaves my view and I always wake up.
I would go back to November 1st 2021 and change one word that is affecting the rest of my life.
If I went further back in time (say the early 80's as Bill has), I wouldn't need to remember ANY sports scores. Just use all the money I could beg, borrow and steal and put them on Apple and Microsoft!
Your dream closely (very closely!) follows a book I just read - Fifty in Reverse by Bill Flanagan. Might be a fun read for you!
Since I was a small child (now 30) I would have this dream that my city turned abandoned and I am a around 6 or 7 years old, wondering around with a stuffed animal. I always ended up on the escarpment in my area that’s over looks Lake Ontario and Toronto. Just as I’m enjoying the view and trying to figure out where everyone is, a GIANT (Godzilla size) gorilla comes chasing after me. I am terrified and run the other way or hide. Then I see he has a red wagon and wants to pull me around in. So I get in and make a new friend. I never understood what caused it, but shortly after I would upset him somehow, and he would yell and toss me and the wagon off the top of the escarpment down into the village below. I would wake from the fall covered in sweat and panicking then realize it was just the dream again.
It was a wild ride, I often wonder what in my subconscious caused the original nightmare and why do I still have it as an adult sometimes?
Although, as an adult, I wish I had it more often. It’ll eliminate some of the work nightmares that replaced my now easy seeming childhood dreams !
I think you have the making of a great childrens book!. Heck I’d read it too. Go for it
My grandmother was my best friend and she would frequently pick me up just to run errands. If I could change something I’d stay home instead of going with her one Sunday afternoon in August 1964. She picked me up and we drove to town. She was going to a visitation for a friend who had died. I stayed in the car with my aunt, who was had some developmental challenges. My grandmother was hit by a car as she was walking across the street in the crosswalk with the light. Didn’t matter that she was following the rules, she was killed anyway.
If she had not picked me up she probably wouldn’t have been at that place at that time. I haven’t spent years blaming myself for this butterfly effect situation but I really wish I had had her in my life during my high school years. I was just entering 8th grade at the time. I’ve had a fine life, but I think it would have gone in a different direction. She had graduated from college in Iowa in 1922 with a degree in psychology. She was by no means a typical Iowa farm girl. I didn’t have nearly enough time to learn from her.
A different way to reach people, Instagram Reels. In about 30 minutes, over 300 views about my Understandably post. I wish I could attach a photo here but don't have the functionality.
My recurring dream happened in the 90s when my now grown children were young. Each night I dreamt that a man broke into our house and brutally raped me in front of my children while my husband was at work.
Each night I would try to change the dream, at first to get to a different place in our home before the actual rape to protect my children. Eventually I succeeded, but it took many, many weeks of "doing it wrong." Finally I kept them safe, and began trying to figure out how to keep me safe. After several months I managed to prevent the attack altogether, and the dreams stopped.
I've wondered why I didn't start with that, the prevention, and figured that it was to sort something out in real life that I had to go through in order to change. Dream symbolism is some bizarre stuff.
Snakes - More snakes - walking down a dirt road, and suddenly black snakes are in the ditches. They come roiling, bubbling towards the center of the dirt road. I won't run (not sure why not), but only walk fast. They get closer to the middle - a moving, twisting mass of black snakes. Gleaming in the sun as they move closer towards the middle. And to me.
Then I wake up.
I had a recurring dream that happened when I was 17 and ended. It played again, as in a rewind, around my 18th birthday and continued from the point it stopped during my 17th birthday. It was an anxiety stress dream about leaving my small town of 2,000 people. An auto shop, a ladder up to a grocery store, a country bumpkin family, a car lose in the woods at night, a sibling set running towards me with creepy dolls around me, and many other touch points of my rural upbringing dotted the dream. It marked an inflection point in my life trajectory as I finally went to college a few months later.
As for changing something in history? How about erasing WWII? I think we can all agree that would be a good thing for humanity.