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Lunchtime Poll

Lunchtime Poll: Game Shows

So I keep having this weird, recurring dream where I’m running through a giant game of Supermarket Sweep! And no matter how many turkeys, bottles of medication, and cheese I pile into my cart (you know, all the big ticket items), I can’t seem to break out of the isles and get back to my checkout counter to drop off my loaded carts. By the end of the dream I have about 20 carts tied together, and I’ve managed to gather all of the large bonuses, much to the chagrin of my competition.

So I was wondering, what are your weird recurring dreams? Am I alone in this absurd quest to buy the most groceries ever!

Or if you’re lucky and dream peacefully, if you could be on a game show of yesteryear, which one would you pick? Are you Nickelodeon Slime kid? Would you rather be on MTV’s Singled Out?

59 replies on “Lunchtime Poll: Game Shows”

Lots of my dreams tend to occur in waterparks. It’s quite strange, and I have no idea where it comes from. I used to have zombie apocalypse dreams that always, always occured on a deserted stretch of freeway, but I haven’t had one of those in awhile.

I also have those stressed-out grad student dreams where I don’t turn in my paper on time, or everything on it is wrong, or something along those lines. I know that’s got to be a common theme around here.

For years I had a reoccurring dream that involved my SO proposing to me with a really ugly cameo necklace (okay. I find all cameo necklaces a little bit ugly).  I always said yes to him but I’d always hesitate because I’d be torn between wanting to ask for something else or accepting it and just hiding it underneath my clothes.

So deep down I’m a horrible and materialistic person.  Or my SO’s tendency to go against the grain was causing me some distress. Take your pick.

 

I used to have dreams about riding in buses quite frequently.  I’d be either on the wrong bus, or waiting for a bus but not sure it was the correct one, or unsure where to find a bus stop.  Lately I’ve been having a lot of dreams in airports and I recently realized that it’s essentially the same dream as the bus dream, just a different mode of mass transit.

I also have a lot of driving dreams,where I have a video game type view of the situation, driving from outside the car and with a full view of the map.  It almost always involves driving in a figure 8 route over and over and making no progress toward my destination.

I used to have recurring nightmares about elevators, about being in one and it breaks, about being trapped between floors. It was so bad that I couldn’t get on an elevator without almost having a panic attack.

Then a couple of years ago, I started having some about being in a car and not being able to see what was ahead because of being on a really steep road or something and then realizing when it was too late that the road ended, or being on roads that were really high (mountains, cliffs) and the road would end and I’d be trapped in the car, flying through the air, just waiting for it to crash.

Yeah… there’s a reason I take the stairs whenever I can.  At my old job, the elevators would get stuck all of the time and I started dreaming about being stuck in them – sometimes I was alone, sometimes there was a critically ill patient I was suddenly responsible for, sometimes it would be crowded full…

You definitely aren’t/weren’t alone.

I often have dreams where I’m either topless or completely naked, and in normal places, like work or back in high school or on stage (? yeah, I don’t know either) and it takes a while for me to realize I’m naked.  When I do, I’m rushing around trying to hide.

 

Sometimes, if I have to pee really bad but I’m not wake yet, I’ll have a dream where I’m trying to find a bathroom, but they’re either broken or busy or out in the open, and I never get to go.  Good thing, probably, because I imagine I’d wake up to a wet bed if I ever found a working dream toilet.

I have that dream dilemma too!  Do I pee in this garbage can, or explode?  If I do pee in this garbage can, how can I move it to a private location to ensure no one will walk in on me?

If I manage to pee in the dream I wake up terrified that I just wet the bed.

I have the reoccurring naked dream every once in a while. Funny enough I’m always try to talk myself into being “comfortable” in my skin instead of rushing to get clothes or hide. I think I read too many ladyblogs.

So I have a weird query. Does anyone else suffer from body hyper-adaptability? For example, I’ve been sticking with this fitness class that’s one of those “stop if you need to puke”/seeing spots after 20 minutes type of deals. The first time I ever did it I was crippled by soreness for 4 days straight. By the next class I was only mildly sore the next day and so on. At this point, I’m fine as soon as we’re done. This should technically be great, but I feel like my body is catching on too quickly and the sneaky bastard will master this without actually changing its appearance. Yes, I love getting stronger but it’d be nice if I LOOKED it too.

You should think about weight lifting. The neat thing about pumping iron is that the challenge can always be there since it’s relatively easy to increase your work load (increase weight, increase reps, increase the time holding the position, decrease rest time…). It focuses more on strength than cardiovascular endurance, so it might be worthwhile to try it out if you need a challenge that doesn’t focus on increasing your heart rate.

Still not exactly what I meant. Doing many, many reps can certainly be hard, but I’m specifically referring to lifting heavier weights. I trust that you are working out hard. Cardio is hard. Multiple reps are hard. But I was suggesting you lift heavy which essentially consists of the following: You do six sets, three of which are with warm-ups weights and building towards a higher weight and the last three are heavy sets where you should really only be able to do six to eight reps. I don’t think I’m explaining myself properly, but I hope that clears it up a bit.

Also, I guess I should have mentioned that feeling muscle fatigue for a few days post-workout isn’t actually a good indicator of whether or not you worked out hard (despite what Arnold says).

I don’t remember my dreams very often, but the only ones I do remember are always the same situation.  I’m back in in my old high school on the first day, but I don’t have a schedule and am struggling in the hallways to make my way to classes that I’m not entirely sure are the right ones.  I’m aware that I’m actually twenty-five years old, but I don’t seem to question in the dream why I’m in high school again.  The main emotion I feel is an anxiety about being caught out of place.  Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any dream interpretation information that’s specific enough to help me hash this one out.

Remember that time that John Ashcroft was trying to get women’s medical records for the abortion information? And then we were riding the teacups on the moon and you were like, “I need to polish my nails” so we went to the Home Depot for gallons of paint and dipped our whole arms in?

Man, I’m glad nothing that stupid can really happen.

I have this deep, dark morbid wish that involves Ron Paul dropping out, declaring himself an independent, picking up Michelle Bachman for a running mate, a scandal that forces Romney to drop out before the RNC, Santorum and Gingrich pairing up as the “unelectable duo” and scoring the GOP nomination, Paul/Bachman and Gingrich/Santorum splitting the GOP vote, and Obama sailing into another four years.

*insert Christopher Cross “Sailing” here*

I haven’t had any really reoccurring (the same exact circumstances every time) dreams for years and years… Since I was in grade school in fact. I shall recount it to you now.

I’m sitting in a classroom, drawing or learning or what have you, and my teacher brings in this potted plant. It’s one of those Venus Flytraps, you know? They set it down on the corner of their desk, explaining that they had gotten it as a gift. The bell rings and it is time for us to go to another class, so we all line up to leave the classroom. There was this rule in my grade school that the last person in line is always the one to turn off the light and close the door. As we file out, we hear this crunching sound and notice that the last child in line is missing. These mysterious disappearances continue as the class becomes smaller and smaller until it is just my friend and I left. We line up to leave and as I flick off the lights, the plant’s leaves wrap around my legs and drag me towards it. It has grown in size, much like Audrey 2 (though interestingly enough, I never saw Little Shop of Horrors until much later in my life). I wake up just as it’s about to eat me.

Those nightmares continued for pretty much my entire grade school career until they petered out towards the ninth grade.

Lately though, I keep having these dreams where either I’m back in highschool (and everyone hates me), I’m improvising poorly on stage (and everyone hates me) or I forgot my cat in a hotel room and he starved to death (and surprisingly no one cares).

 

Can Jeopardy count as an old-timey game show? I’d probably lose, but still, Alex is so dreamy.

I used to have this dream about this giant snake wearing a vest…

:)

My dreams usually seem to be about me making some sort of movie and the stuff in the dream is the movie I’m directing. Sometimes I play a role, sometimes there are actors in it, but it’s all pretty random. It does seem like I’m never really ‘me’ doing ‘me’ things in them. I used to have highly anxious dreams where I was in one place but was supposed to be in another; I chalk that up to working three jobs while in school and having no idea what day it was, where I was supposed to be, what I was forgetting, etc., 98% of the time.

Oh, and I would have loved to have been on Remote Control back in the day. I knew all the videos ev-ar. Or Card Sharks, because it was kind of stupid.

I wonder how rare that is? I’ve had several locations that have recurred over months and even years, so it’d be interesting to figure out what sort of theories people have on that. In one case, it was a location I’d never been to, but a couple of years after I’d had a few dreams about it I ended up walking in front of it (it was a big townhouse/brownstone in a part of DC I’d never been to before).

it’d be interesting to figure out what sort of theories people have on that.

As with dreaming in general, it’s either an important function related to memory integration and emotional processing, or it’s your brain spewing out semiconscious gibberish while it’s taking care of things on a level wholly other than conscious. In the latter theory, dreams are essentially a side effect, though it’s been proposed they may be there to prevent interference. Depends on who you ask. :D

And of course the whole ‘multiverse bleeding through’ aspects :) I think a lot of my dreams have been pretty obvious in interpretation; anxious dreams when I’m anxious, out-of-control dreams when I’m feeling overwhelmed and not in control of things, David Tennant, etc. But some of them come out of left field completely. Thanks brain, you’re supposed to be on my side!

I have several iterations of driving gone wrong dreams. In one I’m driving, but the seat keeps reclining, until I am fully laying down. Another involves driving from the passenger side of the car, or the back seat. Sometimes there are no breaks, not in a scary oh god I’m gonna smash into things way, but in a I have to very carefully coast up to the stop sign kind of way. And I am never driving my own car in these dreams. It’s always my mom’s car, or the F-150 that my dad had when I was first learning to drive, but which he sold 10ish years ago, or some other vehicle I’ve only driven a few times.

The only other dream I have on a regular basis is the one where I am lying in bed, but paralyzed, usually with a scary ominous thing standing in the doorway of my bedroom. I’m told this one is a pretty common nightmare.

ETA: I lied. I do have one more recurring dream. It’s the one in which my alarm clock is going off but I can’t get it to turn off. I will shred my alarm and turn it into a pile of scrap. A pile of scrap that WILL NOT STOP BEEPING. Then I wake up and find that my alarm is going off and has been for a while now.

My brain sends me terrifying nightmares to wake me up when I need to pee in the middle of the night.

I remember having a dream when I was in a kid that I was in one of the Police Academy movies and using the restroom with the female characters. Guess who totally peed her bed that night?

I’ve never been so glad to dream about peeing before if the alternative is nightmares… Of course I’m terrified of peeing in my bed after the one time I did dream about it, so maybe that’s my own version of a nightmare.

Also, I don’t mean to laugh at you, but I think Police Academy dreams are hysterical. Just imagining them makes me giggle.

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