Читать книгу My Ten Years in a Quandary - Robert C Benchley - Страница 16

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Two or three fishermen have written in asking this department if it believes that dreams go by opposites. I am still trying to tie up their question in some way with fishing, but I can't quite figure it out. I don't even know that they were fishermen.

However, I think that it is safe to say that dreams do go by opposites; otherwise, how do you explain the steamboat?

I have a record of a dream in my files which ought to put an end to any doubt on the matter. It was a dream reported to our Dream Clinic by a man who has since settled down and become the father of a family, and, therefore, does not want his name used. (He isn't ashamed of the dream, but the family didn't pan out very well.)

* * * * *

According to this man (and there is no reason to doubt his word), he had been worried about business matters for several days preceding the dream, and had decided to just get into bed and pull the covers up around his head. This was around noon.

He had no intention of going to sleep, but, what with one thing and another, he dozed off, and before he could stop himself was dreaming at a great rate. In his dream he was in a large, brilliantly lighted public dining-room with all his clothes on. This, in itself, marks the dream as unusual. He not only had his clothes on, but he was not running for a train. This, he thought, was funny, but paid little attention to it at the time.

It seemed to him that he sat fully clothed in this public dining-room, not running for a train—in fact, not doing anything at all for quite a long time, although probably it was for the fraction of a second, really. Then he woke up in a cold sweat. He was so unnerved by this dream that he took off all his clothes, went to a public dining-room and ran for a train, which was just at that moment leaving the cloak room. He missed it.

Now, here was a dream which worked out in exactly the opposite fashion in his waking experience. This we will call Case A. The man's name will be furnished on request. It was George A. Lomasney.

* * * * *

Case B is almost as strange and equally impressive in proving that dreams go by opposites. A woman was the dreamer in this case (though, aren't we all?) and she is very anxious to give her name, and to waltz with someone, if possible.

In her dream she was in a greenhouse full of exotic plants, which was on a sort of funicular, running up and down the side of a mountain. The mountain was just a shade narrower than the greenhouse, so the ends of the greenhouse jutted out on either side, making it difficult for automobile traffic, which was very heavy at this point, to pass.

In the greenhouse with the woman was a deaf elk which had got in somehow through a hole in the screen. The elk couldn't hear a word that the woman was saying, so she just went on with her tapestry-weaving, as she had to have the job finished before the greenhouse got to the top of the mountain on its 11 o'clock trip. (That is, 11 o'clock from the foot of East Fourteenth street, where it started.)

* * * * *

Now, the amazing thing about all this was that exactly the opposite thing happened to the woman the very next day. She was not in a funicular greenhouse; she did not see a deaf elk, and she knew nothing about tapestry-weaving.

Laugh that off, Mr. Scientist!