Dreams – 3/25/01

My mother, father, and myself were all visiting a prison for some reason. We were invited to a lecture about what happens to you in the electric chair. Sort of a pre-liminary orientation for death row prisoners (don’t ask- it’s a dream, remember?).

So we’re at this lecture. The guy is showing slides to us and the 10 or 12 death row inmates in the room. One slide comes up showing what happens to one’s hands after one has been electrocuted. My mother points to the picture and exclaims that the person’s fingernails are very clean, and that this was one way of getting them clean.

We start to get weird looks from the inmates. I advise her that this is probably not the best topic to pursue, but she won’t shut up about it. “But they’re clean!! Look how clean they are!!”

The lecture goes on, and my mom is still fixated on electrocution being a method of fingernail cleaning. One of the inmates tries to escape, and runs out of the classroom, guards in pursuit. My mother -again- says something about “Oh, he just didn’t want clean fingernails!” and I point out to her that we are in a room of people who are going to be put to death by electrocution, and perhaps she might want to keep her opinions to herself. I (for some reason) offer up the comparison that “I laugh at funerals when I see them on TV, but at least I have the decency to keep my mouth shut when I’m attending one.”

I’m dismissed as being morbid.

There’s a scuffle outside the classroom doors. We hear a gunshot. Not a loud, movie gunshot, but more of a realistic “pop!” kind of gunshot. The escapee comes into the classroom, and opens fire with what I gather to be a TEC-9 pistol. The guard next to me is hit 5 times, we duck for cover, I can hear my dad hit twice, I’m shot in the shin, and the thigh…. I then black out.  

Next, I woke up. Just now. 

There’s an old wive’s tale that if you are killed in your dreams, you die in your sleep. 

Not so. I’ve been killed numerous times in my dreams, but it hasn’t happened for a while. Usually, I’m hit by a bus. This was a new one though.