> It's too bad you can't record and replay your
>dreams. I wonder if seeing old nightmares again
>would be like renting movies which used to scare
>you and then turn out to be hilariously stupid
>when you watch them 15 years later.

The nightmares *I* remember are hilariously stupid about ten minutes after I wake up and the fright goes away.

The scariest dreams I used to have as a child were the ones where I dreamed I never existed. It was a recurring dream in which I'd be in my house, usually in my kitchen. I'd walk through a doorway, there would be this invisible line/barrier/delimeter or something, and suddenly I never existed. I can't explain it any better than that. It's not even remotely scary to me anymore, although I can remember a time when I used to be able to recall the terror of that dream while fully awake in the middle of the day.

The most recent scary dream I can recall I had a year or so ago. I think this was the same dream that ended up being my famous "making a movie of my own dream" dream. It was the standard "being chased by the evil bad guy" dream, and it was scary the first time around. But then, the second time around (no, I don't often have the same dream twice in one night) was during the "movie making" phase, so it was more like "Ok, now run over here, tumble down the embankment, then get up and... NO NO! CUT! I said TUMBLE, not STUMBLE!"

This was also the famous dream (well, famous to me and Sam) in which I had this awesome tracking shot of me walking down a long school-cafeteria style lunch line. It's one of the few really vivid visual moments I can remember from my dreams. The shot follows me walking past people waiting in line, past the people serving food, past several food displays, until I finally reach the end (or perhaps the beginning) of the line. Whereupon I pick up a doughnut and say "I'd like to exchange this doughnut for a bagel." While *having* the dream, I mentally cringed at that, and thought "Oh come ON! That's the best bit of dialogue I could come up with for this scene!? I set up that whole long awesome tracking shot and THAT is the payoff??"

-- Dave