April 4, 1981 Sense and Nonsense

Everybody dreams. It has been established that our night-time adventures are necessary to balance our daytime personalities. Some dreams are said to reveal hidden emotional conflicts, talents and ambitions, while others contain answers to our everyday problems. According to some learned people, our subconscious minds may actually be smarter than we are!

Dream laboratories have been founded for the express purpose of studying dreams. At these scientific institutes, the employees sleep on the job (insomniacs need not apply!). Researchers waken their subjects at intervals throughout the night to study the quality and quantity of their dreams. The conclusions that the dream people have come to are interesting. They compare our nocturnal experiences to an evening at the movies, with the projector breaking down periodically.

We usually do not dream when we first fall asleep. There is an hour or so of silence before the first cartoon appears on the screen. Our dream theatre features many short nonsensical films with periods of deep sleep in between. Toward morning, a full-length, panoramic projection begins. The main show can go on for over an hour and conforms more to reality than the earlier “cartoons” did. It is this final dream of the night that interests researchers delving into the realm of the subconscious mind. Some believe that if we could monitor it, we could be our own psychiatrists, and possibly our own teachers as well.

I had an interesting dream last night. I dreamed I was a truck driver. I was completely responsible for operating a huge, semitrailer transport truck. I am wondering if I could possibly have a secret yen to be trucker? I am sure I have no mechanical aptitude for the profession. I have trouble backing a small car between snow banks. I know I could never do it with mirrors. In my dream I was lucky, my truck wouldn’t start. However, I knew exactly what to do. I simply radioed someone somewhere for assistance.

I had a complicated communications set-up in my truck. It was attached to a cassette tape recording machine. I kept checking the tape in my recorder for an answer to my call for help, but it was always blank. I could tell it was blank, merely by looking at it.

That’s it! My subconscious mind has invented a sound tape that can give visible evidence on whether or not it has been used. It is not as a trucker, but as an electronics technician where my somnambulistic talents lie! I was probably on the threshold of discovering the secret of a new boon to humanity, one of almost equal significance to the cut-a-way handle on the beer case, when I awoke.

Oh well, maybe tonight my dreams will reveal to me (in layman’s language) the technical formula for the Visi-Ray cassette tape. You know, The Tape That Enables You to See (as well as hear) Your Music.