My first LD! (long read)

[DoctorKwack101]

I'm really excited right now, for last night set the stage for my first official lucid dream. I guess just being on the DV forums made me more aware of dreams and what they're made of, so I was able to recognize it. It was fairly long, so if you'd like, skip to the AWAKE section for when the important stuff happens, and please give it a read and give me some tips. : ] NON-LUCID: I am walking through a neighborhood in New York City (I've never been there, so really it's just a bunch of tall buildings) with my mom, sister, her ex-boyfriend, my father, and my mom's friend Kim. We're supposed to be going somewhere (the details are hazy here), so we walk until we find our car and get inside. My mom drives us around for a while through the dark streets, and I begin to take notice of how odd the roads are. Some of them go straight up and straight down, yet people still drive on them like normal. Sadly, this didn't make me lucid. Neither did the moon, which was doing some pretty weird things. As I'm watching it, it shifts to the right a bit, and some of the shadows on it disappear. I call out to the rest of the family in the car: "I think the moon just changed phases before my eyes...!" My sister's ex-boyfriend looks in the sky, nods, and says: "Yep. Yep, I see it." We don't pay it much mind, though, and continue driving. We're starting to get lost, but my mom uses her iPhone as a GPS to find our way. As we continue driving, I notice something that astounds me - the moon is no longer on the left; it's on the right. And it's five times bigger. I simply shout "WOAH" and point at it, as it begins to change before my eyes. The patterns and patches on the moon start swirling all around, and the moon gets darker and darker before finally disappearing into a cloud of purple mist that explodes outward and dissipates. Did I pinch my nose? Push my finger through my palm? Look at my hands at all? No, all I did was say: "I think I'm tripping balls." No one else in the family saw it, and they all start claiming I was hallucinating or something, so the drive continues. It is at this point we begin to realize that we're hopelessly lost, and my mom is still trying to find our way with the iPhone. However, because in this dream world it is illegal to use a cellphone at all in the car, she has an app installed that emits an alarm when police are approaching, which the phone promptly does. She hurls the phone into the backseat and pretends she was never using it. Soon after, we see police cars come barreling in from the street in front of us, literally slamming into other cars. I just yell out, "Oh my gosh!" and we continue driving like nothing happened. XD My mom tries to use the phone again, but the phone is lagging, and causes the real world to lag, too. "We'll never get anywhere like this," she says, and turns the phone off. She starts asking if anyone knows their way around, which of course, we don't, when... AWAKE: ...my mom wakes me up in real life and says, "I'm watching Downfall!" which is a game show I told her about yesterday. In my sleep trance I say, "That's a good show." and keel over. Now, this is where things get hazy, but I think I remembered to try the FILD technique, so I started lightly pressing my fingers into the mattress one after the other. I couldn't resist the urge to count, though, and I ended up getting to about 98 seconds when I felt the dream coming on again. NON-LUCID II: We're back on the New York streets, and I remember saying something like, "I'm glad that always happens in my dreams!" when it hit me. Dreams? New York. I was just in New York. Wait a minute... is this a dream? This is a... LUCID: ...dream! Right when I say the magic words, everything changes. The world starts spinning and everything gets bright, until I land back in a house that I vaguely recall being in from very early in the first non-lucid dream. I land in the bed and my head shoots upward. I look around slowly, still remembering my lucidity. I slowly get out of the bed and stand for a bit, before assessing my situation. "Okay, I'm lucid," I say to myself, "...what should I do? Everyone always talks about flying, maybe I need to try that..." I turn around and see my window. Without another thought, I run and burst through it. The glass shatters all around me, but I managed to land on the windowsill, so there I am, teetering, looking down at the grass two stories below. I jump off the ledge and try to imagine flying as best as I can, but I can't seem to do it, and I fall flailing to the ground below. Right before I hit, I have a false awakening in the bed again. "Well, I tried," I think to myself, and get out of the bed again. I try to create some DCs in the room, but they don't move and look cartoony. Not wanting to waste any more time, I walk out the door and down the stairs. The house is very dark, but I still hear my dogs barking somewhere in the back. Not wanting them to wake anyone up, I run out the front door. Surprisingly, it's not dark anymore, and even more surprisingly, people are playing golf on our front lawn. "Man, this is a weird dream," I think to myself and laugh a bit. All of a sudden, I remember the task of the month. Walk through a mushroom patch! Well, that was the simple one, anyway. I look to my left, and there is a nice big field with a tall hill. I suddenly got an urge to run up the hill and do a backflip, so I did. I didn't land perfectly, rather on my hands and knees, but it was the first time I had ever attempted a backflip, in real-life or a dream. Feeling accomplished regardless, I resolve to work on flipping later. I take a few steps back, throw my arms behind me, and bring them up in a summoning motion. A large patch of small, standard mushrooms grows out of the ground. As I am summoning them, a random DC comes up to me and asks: "What are you doing?" I simply look over my shoulder and say: "I have to walk through a mushroom patch!" I begin walking through the mushrooms, but I realize that it's kind of hard to keep them there. If I stop thinking about them, they start to fade, so I concentrate and keep walking until I reach the end. I whirl around and pluck one of the mushrooms out of the ground. I eye it a bit, and jusssst before I eat it, my dad wakes me up in real life. CONCLUSION: So that was my first lucid! I wasn't able to do anything special, but I did jump out a window, do a wallflip, and walk through a mushroom patch! More importantly, I was able to remain lucid and focused in a dream, which I have never done before. If you have any suggestions or tips on how I can attain greater control, please let me know. Thank you all for this wonderful forum, and I look forward to more LDs in the future!

[Imaginer1]

Congratulations! My first lucid had no success like THAT. I'm going to keep trying and not get too excited about it.