Welcome back to Bloganuary, the daily encouragement from WordPress for bloggers to post something each day. If you want to participate in Bloganuary, just click here! Today’s prompt asks to: Write about a dream you remember.

I feel like I’m fairly blessed when it comes to my dreams. There are a lot of times when I can remember my dreams in vivid detail. Yet I can’t remember the last time I had anything resembling a nightmare. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had plenty of dreams that were influenced by scary movies that I’ve seen. But in spite of giving Pennywise the Dancing Clown a cameo or even a starring role in one of my dreams, I’ve never woken up with a sense of dread or fear that I was in any real danger.

Most of the dreams I can remember are weird. And I wish I could train myself to recognize when I’m dreaming because I’d really love to try the whole lucid dreaming thing. That’s where you know you’re in a dream and can basically control the world around you. I imagine it would be a lot like being Neo in The Matrix. Sadly, for me, whenever I’ve been in a dream and realized it was all a dream, my mind just wakes me up.

A lot of the time, I’ll remember my dreams for a day or so. Some have been vivid enough, I’ve turned them into short stories here on the blog. Click here for one of them… There have been a couple of dreams that I’ve managed to remember years after having them. One dream, I can still vividly remember, and I know I was no older than five when I dreamed it. But the one I’ll describe is one I had when I was in college.

I was walking on campus, only our campus had transformed. It was much larger than Bluefield College had ever been and many of the buildings were different. The open area between buildings, the quad, was also much larger than I was used to. There were people enjoying the nice day and I came across a cage with a monkey inside. I thought it was odd to see this at my school, since it wasn’t a zoo. And haven’t they stopped putting animals in cages at the zoo anyway? I watched the monkey jumping around the enclosure for a while, then moved on when I got bored. I remembered that I had an Algebra exam that, of course, I had not studied for. But, I figured, do I really need to study the math? Either I understand the concepts or I don’t. Solving a few equations shouldn’t be that hard. I entered the building where my Algebra class should have been located and I came across another odd sight. There were three men who looked like they’d been transplanted from the mid-19th century, judging by their clothing. They were working on a broken down wagon that was missing its two back wheels. When they saw me coming, they stopped me and informed me that I couldn’t go to class until I helped them get this wagon fixed. I tried to protest and tell them I knew nothing about fixing wagons from 150 years ago, but they wouldn’t listen. They just silently handed me their tools then stood there with their arms crossed, watching me as I struggled to get the job done. Somehow I was able to figure it out and installed new wheels. When I was done, they didn’t even say thank you… just grabbed their tools and pushed the wagon down the hall. I finally got to my classroom and it was dark inside, so I figured I missed the exam. I made my way to the dining hall for lunch, where I sat down to eat with Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Pretty sure I woke up after that. Which is a shame, because I figure the best part would have been lunch with Sarah Michelle Gellar. Otherwise, pretty weird, right?