Dreams. Do you remember them?
9I'm one of those people that very rarely remembers their dreams. By very rarely I mean that I may remember one dream once every 2-3 months. Occasionally I'll remember the act of dreaming but won't actually remember any details from my dreams. So when one of those once in a few months dreams pop up that I actually remember I get pretty excited.
Last night I had two pretty epic dreams about beating a giant tsunami by becoming the best surfer in the history of everness (I've never surfed in my life and I live in Texas - no clue where this came from). The first one started on the left coast some where as I carved up the waves through the city and dodged some mountains all the way to the Grand Canyon. The second rendition started at the Dallas World Aquarium (no clue where the tsunami came from on this one) as I got to battle some sharks and crocs that escaped all the way to Europe - yeah, I crossed an entire ocean on a surf board to survive a tsunami. It was great. And I was awesome.
What about you? Do you remember dreams? Are you one of those people that logs your dreams and tries to figure out the deeper meaning?
Feel free to share some of your best dreams as well. Maybe someone here can tell you what it all means and finally shine some light on your subconscious mind for you.
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I'm the same as you. I rarely remember my dreams, I'd say I remember 2-3 in a year. I think this sparks from watching Candyman as an 8 year old then dared by my brother to do the thing in the mirror right after. I had nightmares for months, and I think that experience modified how I sleep/remember dreams.
hopefully in my next tsunami nightmare (yes i have a lot of them) my subconscious will remember this story and give me surfing skills as well. usually i'm just going further and further inland trying to get to the top of taller and taller buildings until i wake up.
@katylava Ok I read this earlier and decided not ask, but I had to come back to it. Seriously???? You have frequent dreams of tsunami's? Where the hell did this come from? - childhood experiences, movies - it's just one of those strange subconscious things that intrigues me..
@katylava I've had tsunami dreams for a good 30 years. Mostly, I'm down low and have to scale an impossible height to get away. There must be something specific that it means if it is so common!
@mfladd @jaremelz i've always thought it meant something about feeling overwhelmed
@katylava That's what I've always assumed, that or it is helplessness. I always have the knowledge throughout them that I will not succeed. Except one that started around 20 years ago, that I've remembered having at least 4 times. This one is in a small town, instead of a beach with a sheer cliff. That one has a chance because it's fairly flat.
I would also like mad surfing skills for my next one. Those are what I primarily have. I have mostly recurring dreams that I've been having since I was young.
But at least I grew out of the one where my mom and sister and I park in a deserted lot around the only building in sight, a grocery store. As we approach, they walk in without a problem. But when I step in the mat that opens the door, Dracula reached up from the mat and starts pulling me down underground. How I know it's him, I'll never know, I just do. I start yelling and screaming but they just walk into the store and keep going. Then, other people are all around and they just keep going past me. I always woke up once my legs were all the way under.
I tend to have adventure-y dreams. I shared this with some already, but from what I remember last night my husband and I were kayaking in the ocean and I pointed out some whales. We kayaked over and pet them. Then it was lunch time and @JonT criticized me for not trying more adventurous food.
@hollboll I too have dreams about @JonT, but I don't care to share them.
I wonder if he knows I'm joking...
I've remembered a handful of dreams over the years. But even those, I've usually forgotten them within a minute or two of waking up.
I generally only remember the worst nightmares or really weird dreams.
I too generally don't remember my dreams but for a few seconds after I wake up. Sometimes I think to myself, "that was a good dream you wont forget this one." But by the time I get in the shower its gone. :-(
The one I remember the most was from when I was a child, I would say 7 maybe. I cant go into detail about it but I know it involved Micheal Jackson singing to me from on top a rainbow.
Years later I tell my future wife this and for my birthday she gave me Thriller, it was signed "keep dreaming, Micheal Jackson" and of course she also drew a rainbow.
I have not remembered a dream since I was about 11.
It has been so long that I can't relate to people telling me about their dreams. I tell them it's like trying to explain how a song sounds to a deaf person.
I also can fall asleep and wake up in exactly 90 minute increments. I sleep 7:30 a night and do not need an alarm clock. My wife tells me I am a robot.
@spacezorro my "naps" are always either exactly 90 minutes or 3 hours.
@katylava Hello fellow robot friend.
I remember them vividly. Most recently, I dreamt that I was outside with the bitter cold of winter just rolling in to start the season, running away from my lover. I had walked and walked until I reached a church to escape the cold. Now, I'm not the pious type, but I knew well enough to kneel and look as if I were praying. A priest appeared out of nowhere and began to comfort me by talking about how much he enjoyed the cold and sometimes it's best to compromise on the things we love for the people we love more. When I awoke, I realized that my desire to return to California would always be a dream, even on such a winter's day.
@JerseyFrank Mamas, Papas.
I hate to be ordinary, but my experience is that often remember my dreams vividly when I first awake, but unless I make an effort to process them, talk to wifey or write them down, they fade fairly quickly. Although sometimes something later in waking life will stir a faint recollection.
And of course when we re-remember our dreams (as with all of our memories of our life), science tells us that we're not remembering the original experience, but the version we constructed in the most recent remembering. Which is to say: the story of our lives (including our dream lives) is a more-and-more-distant ripple from whatever it was that actually happened.
I remember three or four dreams from childhood that haunt me still.
I like what you said about renditions, @MEHcus. I've noticed that quite often (at least for the dreams that I remember) certain scenes in my dreams are redone over and over (I mean consecutively or at least within the same night)--apparently in an effort to get it right.
Here's what I wanna know: who else has that crazy thing (usually induced by sleep deprivation) where you doze off unintentionally then mostly wake with a total non sequitur of thought(s); but for a fleeting instance, the non sequitur is all that makes sense and you struggle to reconcile your weirdass dream consciousness with fast-approaching reality. And sometimes you speak the nonsense. There's almost an urgency to it, because it's a sort of epiphany and/or catastrophe. Then you realize, no, that was crazy land. And usually some presupposition of the crazy statement is certifiably untrue anyway.
This is akin to what happens sometimes when we awake from regular sleep, only it feels like the line is thinner between the two worlds and they're occupied at once.
I love it and hate it. Part of me thinks there's a whole trove of secret truth there that evaporates like morning mist. Part of me fears that this experience foreshadows my eventual dementia (and indeed, it is very much like interacting with a crazy person).
The incongruity of my different states of consciousness is startling, in both delightful and horrifying ways.
@joelmw Alas no, I never remember my dreams and for the most part the extent of my first waking is alarm logic. If there is daylight and there is no alarm going off I have either woken before it or slept through it, and the dilemma how long can I procrastinate that its the former before fear its the latter wins out. Because one you get out of bed its just not the same if you try to get back in.
@joelmw I've done it often. Now I'm starting to wonder if I should be blaming you for some of these things. Like... maybe you genetically passed down an overactive brain that will not calm down for something as "trivial" as sleep.
@christinewas I thrive on sleep and know that my brain, my heart/mind and spirit need it most of all. It saddens me (for us both) that it's so often a time of struggle and manifest discontent, frustration and confusion (then again, I think that when we're awake, we mostly put up a facade to hide these feelings that are always there), but even as such, I almost always wake up refreshed and with my thoughts somehow hopefully (I mean that in the proper and not colloquial sense) re-aligned. There's clarity and a sense of purpose and optimism. Even better, if I go to sleep early enough and awake in the small hours of the morning (one of my persistently favorite Night Watch quotes :-) ) without the pressure to return quickly to sleep, I find such energy and bold imagination--which I attribute, rightly or wrongly, to the unshackled play (and, yes, even strenuous wrestling) afforded in the altered consciousness of sleep.
OK, here's a weird thing that happens to me: I generally don't remember much about my dreams on waking. I usually can't pull up solid memories of scenes from dreams when fully awake. However often, just as I drift through semi-consciousness on the way to sleep, I can remember vivid scenes from past dreams (sometimes dreams from years ago). I get this deja vu feeling as I recognize details even down to the emotions that I felt in the original dream. I later remember remembering and the deja vu, but not the details of the remembered dreams. Too weird!
I often marvel at the capacity of the human brain/subconscious to be able to store so much superfluous (I guess) data.
@macromeh I don't think it's superfluous; I just think we don't understand it yet. And it seems that that's part of the point: that it's as yet not neatly classified data that we're trying to process--and maybe are processing on some weird level.
@joelmw For a lot of my dreams, I can clearly see that I am processing something. Or that it is at least birthed from the overflow of a really dominant emotion. But I often have some really out-of-nowhere (sometimes disturbing) dreams that I'd like to think can't be explained in that way. Otherwise, I am subconsciously observing and not processing a lot of really horrifying things during the day.
I remember many of my dreams and vividly. I just had one 2 night ago and shared it in detail with my Mom because my Dad was in it, and he passed away about 8 years ago. He's in a lot of my dreams and always in a happy & healthy way (as he was not healthy for about 2 years before passing). My best friend and some co-workers were in it too and it was Thanksgiving.
When I was young I used to have 2 different recurring dreams that were essentially nightmares. In one my Mom & sister and I would go to the grocery store and I would always fall in a big black hole in the back of the store by the deli when I would go there to get my fruit roll-ups. In the other there would be a man/monster chasing me in my neighbor's yard and I would be trying to make it in to my yard to safety. Now my recurring dream that I have several times a year is about driving somewhere and my brakes give out and I can't stop.
@tinkertime I think that's beautiful, that you always dream of your dad happy and healthy.
I have some dreams like that about my mom (she also passed away 8 years ago). But I can't say that she is happy and healthy in the majority of them. Sometimes we are even arguing about something really stupid and I wake up feeling like a jerk. (I think I have a lot of subconscious guilt over not loving her better when she was still alive. I wasn't a terrible child. I just understand and appreciate her so much more, as I mature.)
Is it ever painful for you, to wake up and process the fact that he is gone, in the waking world? Sometimes, my dreams about my mom make me really happy. Sometimes they make the pain of losing her excruciating.
@christinewas I'm so sorry you lost your Mom, I dread that day. I usually feel happy when I awaken after dreaming about my Dad, it's like he came to visit me. It's usually when I hear a certain song, or different events are happening and I have to come to terms that he's not around and nor will he be and that's when I usually break down. You shouldn't be so hard on yourself concerning your Mom, I'm sure she knew you loved her no matter what.
@christinewas I'm not sure that I told you about some of the most significant dreams I had of your mother. For a while after she died I had these dreams where she and I would be dealing with her death. I remember especially toward the end, she didn't do any talking. One in particular I told her, "I know it's not allowed for you to actually come back, but it would be awesome if we could just meet like this and I could still see you and talk to you. That's all I ask."
After I met Chrissy, I had two very distinct dreams in which things were totally the way they once were with your mom (not dreamlike; like real life). It was as if she had no idea that she was gone. I felt terribly guilty, because there she was--as I had asked and wanted (not enjoyable though, because the conflict was immediate and devastating)--but 1) I had made several major decisions without having really talked to her (which is not how we lived) and 2) I was in a relationship with another woman (yeah, that definitely wasn't how we lived). In a later dream I was conscious that I was in a dream, that it couldn't be real, that I didn't have to feel guilty. And I said that to her and woke up. In some ways that resolved it for me (the previous dreams ended and I felt release from a certain sort of guilt), but honestly, mostly not. It's very Matthew 6:24. And that's probably as much I want to say.
I remember a dream I had last night about...
ooops, it's gone.
@katylava Perhaps...
Last night I had a dream that ISIS members took over the house I grew up in while I was there. The previous night I had a dream where a giant Saltwater Crocodile eat a couple in the river where I was. In general though my dreams involve some sort of combat adventure probably due to the amount of CSGO I play before I go to bed.
I very rarely remember my dreams and most of the time I don't feel like I had any. Like only once every few years. So one of the last ones I remember was from probably 2008-2009, and it was so weird it's stuck with me.
I'm going to try to figure out how to tell this story without landing on the watchlist of any bureaus or services where guys in suits might come knock on my door, since to tell it outright requires the use of a few keywords that would probably raise attention. Although in this case the subject and object of that statement would be reversed, I'm more comfortable trying to sidestep this in writing on the Internet, so I'll try to paint a picture of the lead character we'll call "Barney" first.
Barney would be probably the most important man in all the land. He's on TV every day but not an actor, and he plays a lot of golf. His domicile, in RGB hex, would be described as #FFFFFF. His job title rhymes with "Pepsodent". I think you get the picture.
So, on with my dream. I'm playing basketball one on one with Barney in a driveway. He's schooling me pretty handily, but I'm not surprised, because i am a fat white guy. There is a conflict between us, an unspoken tension that I know something that he doesn't want out, but we do not discuss this thing.
Barney calls a stop to the game and we adjourn to stand outside the back of a black SUV next to the driveway. We've stopped for lunch and so he pulls out two Subway sandwiches from a cooler in the truck and hands me a footlong. I'm unwrapping mine and he's already got his unwrapped. His sandwich is not cut in two, and he wields the thing like it has considerable heft.
Barney maneuvers the footlong sandwich so the end is pointing directly at me, winks at me and bites down on the sandwich. A round goes off and I wake up. He shot me in the face with a Subway sandwich.
I don't know why that stuck with me, but if I'm ever invited to a one on one basketball game in that eastern town within the next year or so, no way we're playing before lunch.
@djslack I think ANYONE would vividly remember "Barney" shooting them in the face with a subway sandwich. So I don't so much wonder why it stuck with you, but how your brain came up with that in the first place. Hahaha!
I rarely remember my dreams for more than a couple of minutes after I wake up, but occasionally part of one will stick in my memory. In the most recent one, I was in China with a group of people, and my friend Doug and I were shopping in this big mall in the airport. He bought a furry jacket that the back part of it was a teddy bear. He cut the bear out to take home to his girlfriend, and when I tried to take the leftover pieces of fake fur to make cat toys with, the store tried to charge me for them. Then the police were chasing some criminals on the runway at the airport while we were waiting for our flight home, I was watching them and realized the plane they were trying to take off in was going to crash right into the terminal. I turned to run away from the windows when they shattered, glass flew everywhere, and I was running over it in my bare feet. o.O
@Pony I want to see that jacket now.
I have and remember dreams ALL THE TIME. I've almost turned a couple of the more elaborate ones into books. (Maybe I will give this year's nanowrimo a shot if I dream about anything interesting in late October.) I also have sleep issues and a brain that doesn't know when to quit.
One recurring nightmare from my early childhood was a gigantic, bloody skeleton hunting me. The dreams always ended with me giving up and hiding, knowing I would be found. The theme of giving up extended to a lot of my dreams.
It was a huge turning point in my life when I had an "impossible odds"/"giving up" dream where I ultimately overcame. HUGE. And now I can't even think of a recent dream where I threw in the towel before waking.
Well, I had three part series resident evil dreams. The first one me and my family were in a beaten up old mansion, and we were told to get out because it was really old and the floor could collapse. After that we went to a second mansion that I think was where we were trying to go in the first place because there was a party and we sat at a table. The floor then collapsed and a black buff man in a pink tutu flew away and escaped. Dream me woke up into a zombie apocalypse,
with my family, and walked up to a door that looks like Booker Dewitt's in bioshock infinite. As we opened the door I woke up. A few months/ a year later, I had another dream that connected with it. I found my cousins in the apocalypse held up in a large building like a warehouse with shops in it next to a huge dock/port. My cousin and I were playing resident evil 2 on a CRT TV so I guess we had power. Then a girl commanding the zombies kinda kicked us out by flooding the place with zombies. We escaped and made it to a ship. More months later, another dream where I am on a island in le zombie apocalypse, and my and my family stop at a covenience store, clear It of zombies and take the Entamens cinnamon coffe crumb cake they had, and were all like "sup" to a trucker. We got to a hotel, cleared all the rooms, and on the top floor was a tv with a small windmill ontop. We couldn't find the remote and eventually found being held by a zombie. We killed him and took the remote, then watched Star Wars on the tv. Yay.
I dream a lot. As soon as I fall asleep until I wake up, I'm dreaming. I don't believe in the different stages of sleep because I can dream so soon. I've woken up 20 minutes after going to bed and had a what seemed like a 3 hour dream. I don't remember most of them, but they are very entertaining and/or very scary.
One of my recurring dreams involves dirty bathrooms - no toilet paper, shit encrusted seats, overflowing bowls, flush doesn't work. Also, the bathrooms are always in a large, open room with many toilets with nothing separating one disgusting toilet with the next.
@looseneck I know the feeling. What I really hate is when I'm half asleep, talking to someone, and I start dreaming, because I always end up saying something that was supposed to stay in my dream.
@egglian I hate when I'm yelling at someone in a dream because it apparently makes me loudly moan or grunt in real life.
@trilliongrams or worse, when you try to punch someone in your dream and no matter how much force you put into it, it just barely touches the person. Augh!
Yeah, I remember every dream in pretty vivid detail. Last night, I dreamed I got stuck in this weird amusement park ride. Oddly enough, the ride was from a dream about an amusement park I had, like, 4 or 5 months ago. Anyhow, it was one of those rides where you float along in a story line and then it gets darker and scarier until you fall down a big drop. But in my dream, instead of little animatronic figures, it was all live action. I was talking to my bf, who was in the seat behind me, but when I looked back, the rest of the riders were gone, including the bf. At some point, there was a dude with a sword fighting a lady, but then he looked right at me, and I realized they were having an actual argument and I shouldn't be there. So I turned around and my cart had been destroyed. I finally found a staff worker who started to show me the way back, but then I lost him, so I was lost, walking around in this creepy, live-action water ride in the dark for the longest time. When I finally made my way to the beginning of the ride, there were alarms going off and they were going to arrest me.
The night before, I dreamed the country was in a state of a modern civil war. My battle buddy was Robin Williams.
@egglian if you remember them all, do you confuse them with real memories? i always thought maybe we forget our dreams so fast because otherwise we wouldn't remember what was a dream and what was real.
I don't remember dreams much at all but my favorite aspect is that most of the time I can float, and fly. Not like Superman, but I can kick up off the ground and float/fly along in the direction I want to go, and get maybe 20-30' off the ground, though with less certainty. Don't need ladders to get to a roof or high shelves, and annoy other people in the dreams as I 'sit down' with feet off the ground, floating. Nobody else in the dreams does it. And it feels so absolutely natural and right that its always a buzzkill to wake up and feel the immutable gravity...
@duodec Good dreams are the worst, because you wake up and none of it was true.
@duodec I have a whole series of flying/levitation dreams. For some reason the levitation dreams are a little freaky. In the flying dreams, my height above the ground varies significantly and seems directly proportional to my confidence.
In one recurring nightmare I used to have in college, the dreams would almost always start with my soaring effortlessly over vast landscapes. Just enjoying the hell out of it. As the dream progressed, however, and I became increasingly conscious of the mechanics of flight and its improbability, my height decreased until, typically at the end, I was able to manage only a few inches and that on a bicycle-like contraption.
But in another recurring dream, I'm very much conscious of the improbability, and yet it still works. And there's a will and a sort of effort in the lift off (and occasionally periodically through flight)--but it's a very satisfying sort of exertion and experience. Not infrequently, I teach others (or try to teach them at least) to join me. Those are maybe my most favorite dreams ever.
I'm convinced that it all has to do with the creative process.
Sometimes in waking life--I'm mostly not ashamed to say--I've attempted telekinesis and flight. Yaknow, subtly, just sitting, but with a focus of thought. Sigh, nothing so far.
@joelmw Although I hadn't read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when my flight dreams started, I suspect in the dreams its not too different from "There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. Its knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss. ... Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that presents the difficulties.".... I haven't managed that second part in my rare attempts to emulate dream flight. Reality bites.
I'm mildly acrophobic. Tall buildings and airplanes are ok, lattice metal walkways over high empty space, or walkways/roofs without rails/walls over high empty space are troubling. I think thats why getting too high in the dreams leads to uncertainty. I don't fall, but the flight gets wobbly and dippy until I get lower. Then its smooth cruising.
Good Hitchhiker's article on flight here
I'll remember 1 or 2 from almost every night.
Last night I pissed off my sister by falling asleep in the lobby of a movie theater so we missed the movie.
Night before that I had sex with Dirk Nowitzki.
I should clarify that the two points above were both dreams. Yes, I fell asleep in a dream (I've been pretty exhausted lately). And Dirk was not married in the other dream.
@trilliongrams Dirk is my hero
@trilliongrams @MEHcus Dirk does indeed seem genuinely likable and cool.
@MEHcus that aquarium dream represents how overwhelmed you were by the prices at the Dallas World Aquarium. Lovely place by a bit pricey.
@trilliongrams For real though. I went a few weeks ago and haven't been able to buy anything to eat since. I'm broke now.
Sometimes I remember dreams and sometimes not. One I remember that was really cool was I was an astronaut and we were going to the center of the universe. Looking out the window in that dream was. Have dreamt I was soaring like a bird more than once. Had some recurrent nightmares on occasion. Then other nights I remember none of them.
Not to get all spiritual or looney tunes or new agey or whatever (not intentionally, that is; whether this is or not is, as most things, a matter of judgment): whatever you believe about higher powers and what they might specifically whatnot (and, for the record, my feelings about that shit are constantly in flux), I come to the inevitable conclusion that there are dimensions of reality and levels of consciousness that most of us--especially in our scientific, post-industrial, rationalist culture--are broadly insulated from in daily life. I believe in fact that we've lost (and as a generally rule are prone to lose) the ability conceive of that which transcends the implicit constructs of our shared world view.
Dreams in various ways offer access to that lost cosmos.
That's all.
Months after my mom died (she drank too much beer and ate too little of substance, started having alcohol related dementia, she'd hurt her back, the doctor prescribed muscle relaxers and pain pills, when taken as prescribed pretty much melted mom's brain - the geriatric doc at the care facility said the prescription would have been perfect for an 18 year old in good health and in her rare moments of lucidity, she realized that she'd most likely never be "complete" again, so she just quit eating (I visited her every day and would find food hidden around her area; the staff thought she was eating) and died six weeks after going into the care facility, her heart just stopped. She was 5' 6" and weighed less than 90 lbs at the time of her death) she came to me in a dream, looking well. She was a good weight, her eyes were clear and she was happy. I asked why she'd done what she'd done and she told me not to worry about it, it was in the past and she was happy and enjoying where she was now.
It was a good dream.
So, thank you very much -- I have NEVER had a tsunami nightmare before! This weekend, I had one where I looked out the window of a house I didn't recognize and a huge wave was about to strike where we were. I sent my husband out the front door with my son because he is the stronger swimmer. The wave made it through the house, but I had to get to my daughter, who was in the kitchen in the back, before the next wave hit. Somehow I got to her, to find her hands separated from her. I searched for the small cooler so I could pack them up to be reattached later. I picked her up, fireman carry style, clutched the cooler and ran ( I suck at swimming! ). Somehow, I made it safely with her to the hospital. Amazingly, her hands really were attached, but the woman's whose hands I found was very grateful to me for saving them, because she had HER hands reattached to her body.
All the while in the back of my mind, I was worried about contaminating the detached hands..
I can't imagine what my dreams would be like if I drank or did drugs!!!
I had another dream that night which was as vivid.. sigh...
Here's one of my favorite dreams (I post ones I can remember in my weblog) from two years ago.
It was absolutely awesome and fun. There were a bunch of us at a hotel, on the balcony, overlooking a beautiful water view (don't know if it was ocean or lake). We were on the second story and sitting on the edge of the railing. I slipped and started to fall. No one would help me climb back up. I almost made it, but slipped again. I was terrified I was going to drop and die. I looked down.
The ground was about a foot away. Yeah, I can do this. I dropped and went back inside, planning on going up to my room. I walked over to the elevator and everybody was so nice. I vaguely recall thinking they were Canadians. They were happy and making jokes. I got into the elevator and noticed a different exit. I went through it into this really wonderful toy shop.
The toys were alive! Not human (think Toy Story), but they interacted with the humans in the shop. They had personalities. One side of the store there were stuffed animals, one was a blue fuzzy ferret. His face was so realistic (even if it was blue and fuzzy). One of the employees warned me to stay away from that one "he's mean" she said. And sure enough, the little bastard bit me. But it didn't hurt at all. Because he was a blue fuzzy stuffed toy. I walked through this store, grinning from ear to ear, finding some real joy in what I was seeing. I was entranced.
Then I woke up. Grinning.
It was right up there with the best dreams ever.
@lisaviolet like the toys in Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium?
@duodec Yes, like those. It was just so very amazing and wonderful.
I must say, I can only gather that I am worried about the safety/welfare/sanity of my children -- last night's dream was about having another child and I was an AWESOME mom to this new baby -- I had patience, and I knew how to handle each situation, and the baby was gleeful. Totally unlike my everyday situation with the two children I do have ;) Oh and the baby smelled sooooo wonderfully baby - ish.
Every once in a while I have a dream about my kids when they were young. It's really neat seeing them at those ages again.
A book that may be of interest to people in this thread:
A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming: Mastering the Art of Oneironautics