What a Nerd

The trick to remembering dreams is to reflect before you even move from under the covers in the morning. This morning as I sit in bed, lights still off, I see snippets of at least a few dreams. There is one, however, that I can't quite harness in. I have a vague sense of it, but the longer I am awake, the further it slips from my mental grasp.

Here's what I do remember, in no particular order:

...The middle school youth were putting on a Halloween pageant and singing the worship song, "You Have Redeemed My Soul." In the dream I heard them singing and followed the sound because I love that song. A few waking days ago I thought about the song and how we should sing it at youth group... I'm not sure how appropriate it is for a Halloween pageant though...

...I spent the night with Amy Clark at Tech-- in waking life on Thursday night after the UNC game, and also in my dream last night. Yes, Amy, I spent the night with you in my dreams :) When we woke up in the morning (in the dream...) Amy realized she had a. failed to prepare for an exam, and b. slept in, and now had to hurry to take the test. I tried to console a very frazzled Amy as we ran across campus to her class. At some point during the trek--actually, as we ran through the auditorium-- I became aware that the entire exam measured the class's ability to distinguish between two flavors of Nerds candies. For the test, although the dream ended before we reached that point, each student had to pour a box of Nerds into their mouth and sort the strawberries from the lemonades. My consolation morphed into, "Amy, you'll be fine! You know what strawberry tastes like, and lemonade is tangy!"

I remember the rest of my dreams last night in 10 second clips, as opposed to actual stories:

...Hundreds of cars sat in a traffic jam. A van fell over on the curb (I think the other cars were pushing,) and the van stood itself back up like an animal would stand from a sleeping position.

...We met for youth group on the stage of an enormous outdoor auditorium. Everyone sat in a line on benches waiting for something to start playing on the big screen. Then someone zip-lined in from a platform that was too high and too far away to see. No big deal.

...I was hanging out with friends in my room at my mom's house, and people brought us breakfast... through the window. I was handed an open can of vegetable soup, which I rudely threw away because a. I make my own vegetable soup that happens to be delicious, and b. I don't eat it for breakfast. In the dream I acknowledged that I was being ungrateful, but didn't care.

I have a few other snapshots floating through my brain--like leaving my facewash on the counter of a public bathroom and watching through a crack in the stall to make sure no one took it, and a friend leaving his lunch box on the bottom level of a parking garage-- but nothing with much substance. By this point I have completely lost the dream I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Bummer.