Bad Acting and Prophetic Dreams

I am usually not one for dreaming up prophecies, or having dreams that literally come true. I have a lot of deja vu moments during the average week, though - and most of those times it's because it feels like I dreamed about it at some point in the past. It feels even weirder when the moment itself is incredibly boring or routine - which means that I have been dreaming about my dull and boring life.

Last night / this morning, I got of got this shock. I'm pretty sure I'd hit the snooze button once or twice, which leads to very vivid half-awake/half-asleep dreaming, but the message was loud and clear. Let me take you to my crazy dreamworld. Well, before that I'd better let you know what I did last night (since dreams are just short-term memories being downloaded into long-term memory, for those of you who didn't take a boring Psychology class like I did).

If you've ever seen the show Jackass, you'll have a base understanding of what I'm talking about. If you've also seen the show Viva La Bam (technically a spinoff of Jackass, I think), you're right on track. Basically I've recently been watching the CKY movie series. CKY (or Camp Kill Yourself) is most of the original Jackass group and all of the stunts they were pulling long before Jackass even made it on the air. In fact, a few scenes from the CKY movies are almost certainly worked into the first season of Jackass. It's wild. Anyway, last night I watched the film "Haggard" - which is basically the entire cast of Jackass (well, the entire cast of Viva La Bam) trying to do what SEEMS to be an authentic full-length feature film. Seriously. The acting is crappy and spotty, all of the characters are like weird personae thought up by the actors, and the plotline is almost decent. Rather full of holes, but still passable as a storyline.

Cue up the dream sequence, and the dream itself was full of bad acting. There was something about a field trip back at my elementary school, and lots of spreadsheets were involved. Combine a boring job with a bad-acting movie and that's apparently what you get. The end of the dream is what I remember most vividly. I'm in the back seat of my parents' car as they're picking me up from this field trip. They're talking about something, asking me some questions about how it was and if I had a good time. We get to the end of my elementary school's driveway, and my mom turns around and says, "Ethan is braindead." and that just jolts me completely out of sleep and the radio alarm goes off.

Ethan is the name of my cousin. And I sat there in bed for several minutes trying to acknowledge that I was having a dream. Some of my dreams involve long conversations about important things, and then I have to get out of bed because I know that I'm obviously not talking to anyone because my phone is nowhere near the bed and these people are obviously not in my room. But it all feels so REAL.

So now I'm sitting here at the office, wondering if I should call home and ask about my cousin.

I know that if something WERE wrong (like him being braindead or something happening to him that would cause such a thing) - my parents would have contacted me to let me know. Do I risk sounding like a paranoid freak of nature and call to ASK if something's wrong? Do I share my vision of impending doom and give yet another item to add to their list of reasons why I belong in professional psychological therapy sessions.

It later occurred to me that I know of a few Ethans, not necessarily my cousin (the first one who came to mind). My friend's nephew is named Ethan - I hear her talk about him all the time. Babies are just as vulnerable to brain death as teenagers...

(Update: It's the mid-afternoon and neither my mother nor friend have mentioned an Ethan or braindead states. I think it really was all a dream.)