I wonder . . .

... how many shared dreams there are in the collective sub/unconscious ether. You know, the dreams everyone seems to have more than once.

I can think of at least five. I don't count the falling one, because it's more a sensation as you fall asleep than an actual dream. But here are some of the ones I'm able to identify.

There's the one where you go to school/work naked. The one where you are taking or are about to take a test you haven't studied for. The flying one. The one where the closet at the end of your bed opens up and becomes a puppet theater, and demonic Punch & Judy puppets rise from the suspiciously red-glowing area below and tell you awful, horrible things, like how they're going to stab everyone in your family. And finally, the one where you're in a public place like a library or a department store or a restaurant and you either have to poop or have let a very wet-sounding fart and need to check your underwear, and the only "restroom" in the place isn't a room at all, but a single stall out in the middle of everything, and the walls only come up to seated-armpit height or the door is missing or unable to shut, so everyone can see you, and you go into it and don't know how exactly you're going to do your business without everyone looking at you, and then you wake up.

What's that, you've never had the last two? Well, in that case, neither have I! I, uh, have a FRIEND who has, and he told me about it! Yeah, that's it!

Is it a comment on not living within your pigeonhole?

Here's the dream I had last Wednesday night.

I'm living at my old house in Sturkie, and am planning a yardsale. Prior to the yardsale, I am going through my old things and giving away things to whoever wants them.

I open my closet, and inside is every shirt I ever owned, and some I saw in catalogs and liked, and some that didn't really exist at all but that I thought OUGHT to exist. And they're all somehow in mint condition.

In my bedroom are three groups of people, all waiting eagerly to see what shirts they get. They are a group of stereotypical nerds, Angie Dover (the homecoming queen my senior year in high school), and KORN.

Yes, KORN. The rock group.

And my shirts are all dividable into three categories: preppy/clothes that were popular or trendy at the time I had them, shirts with comic-book characters or mathematical equations on them, and black rock band/monster tees. One I remember was Frankenstein, Dracula, Nosferatu and Quasimodo in grey silkscreen, arranged like Mount Rushmore.

The thing was, I'd pull out, for instance, a preppy shirt and look at the size and say, "Who wears a Large?" And all the members of Korn would raise their hands. But if I pulled out the Monster Rushmore shirt and asked "Who wears a large?" Angie Dover would raise her hand. And if I pulled out a pastel Miami Vice shirt the same size, the nerds would raise their hands.

And if I pulled out the VERY geeky yellow T-shirt I got for my birthday in sixth grade with the picture of a guitar-playing crocodile on it with the caption "Croc & Roll!!!" shirt, and asked who wears a medium, suddenly all the members of Korn were now size medium.

I am a believer that dreams try to tell us things about ourselves, but for the life of me I can't figure this one out. Is it telling me I don't fit in anywhere? That I shouldn't judge people by their experience? What?