Blue_Opossum

Morning of November 1, 1974. Friday.



Note that this dream journal title came long before any other associated names which I have since learned of (though I have never seen anything related to the “Dinosaucer” series that apparently first aired in 1987 and do not know much about it at all).

This dream ends a little like the flying saucer dream from my childhood, though a brontosaurus emerges in this one (somewhat snake-like) instead of the apocalyptic elephant. This dream is much shorter than the elephant version and is not as emotional upon ending (and does not directly imply the end of the world as in the elephant dream).

After hearing about reports of a possible alien invasion in my dream (from my mother’s large pale green radio), I find myself near my school. The single flying saucer that eventually lands looks like the one from the original “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (from 1951). I do not recall much vivid detail other than the brontosaurus neck and head emerging from the door of the flying saucer. (I never see the body at any point.) There seems to be an eerie (though unrealistic) contrast between the dinosaur’s head and neck and the shadow it casts near the outer area of the spacecraft.

It is possible that there is an association with a cereal prize/premium that was called “Noggin Nodders” (from Kellogg’s). I had several of every piece in the set in different colors. The one that seemingly influenced this dream in part was a snake head emerging/wobbling from a log.

Night of February 1, 1973. Thursday.



I am sleeping on my stomach on the carport roof of the Cubitis house, facing north, fairly close to the first trellis, not really noticing the large corrugated sections running east and west (which were very annoying and problematic to maneuver over in real life, especially barefooted), with my arms supporting my head, a bit unrealistically too far out from the edge of the roof (as if my upper body is supported by an intangible surface). It is late at night, and there is a slight odor of smoke, probably from the west though also likely underneath me in the side yard. I cannot remember when I decided to sleep up here as it is not Friday (dream logic - though I typically did not mess around on the roof on school nights in reality) though it is curiously not that cold for the winter.

Either the Virginia Dare colony or the gypsies from “The Valley of Gwangi”, or perhaps both, are camped out at the southern periphery of the orange grove. It seems like a good way to survive for awhile - in eating Harold M’s oranges. In the distance behind me (mostly southeast?), John Boy Walton is hollering (almost inaudibly from my position though) about the inferiority of strangers (and the fact that only the Waltons are actually real people) and the superiority of Walton’s Mountain. I feel like climbing down, finding him, and punching him a few times, but I mostly remain relaxed, probably because I also sense that a tyrannosaurus will soon eat him in mid-speech (or perhaps the father of Virginia Dare will shoot him - I sense he has already been shot once under similar circumstances). However, in a drastic change of mood, John Boy decides that the Virginia Dare colony belongs on Walton’s Mountain. They are possibly intangible ghosts.

It also eventually occurs to me that the Virginia Dare colony was eaten by the tyrannosaurus from “The Valley of Gwangi” and I cannot understand why that had not been widely published in the newspapers. I know there is a tyrannosaurus around, but I somehow also know that he will not be in the immediate area at any point. I hear Harold M shooting at random dinosaurs briefly with his rifle (likely from a lawn chair on his very small mostly enclosed patio where he usually shoots at foxes and crows in reality), with an odd unrealistically distant echo, and cussing about his oranges being pilfered. Meanwhile, John Boy Walton dons a fox mask, which thus (automatically) makes him the new sheriff and so he can find the rest of Virginia Dare’s relatives. I am disgusted and disturbed by Virginia Dare’s father (Ananias Dare) roasting the eohippus (from “The Valley of Gwangi”), or maybe it is not Ananias Dare but Matt Dillon (James Arness). I am angry about this, but it is too late to crawl down from the roof via the trellis and I am wary about the tough look on Matt’s (James’s) face.

Night of August 29, 1971. Sunday.



A small dinosaur (possibly a young Ornithomimosaur) that is only about as tall as I am, and of which I think of as an ostrich dinosaur, is running back and forth in the hallway of my Cubitis home, trying to get into one of two rooms (and rattling the doorknobs each time), the bathroom or the hallway closet (the doors of which are on opposite sides - and near opposite ends - of the hallway; the bathroom door perpendicular to the back door and the hallway closet perpendicular to the living room opening). I feel sort of sorry for it (regarding its seeming confusion or indecision) but stay out of its way (and it does not seem to become aware of me at any point or at least act as such). There is no threat of any kind. I seem to be viewing the event from near the bathroom door though in the bathroom at one point, somehow seeing through the closed door.



Due to a particular vague association in my dream, I think this may have been influenced by an old cartoon (possibly Betty Boop or Silly Symphony; though even after extensive research, I have not been able to locate it) which showed a kangaroo going to the door of an airplane (while in flight), not being able to open it, and soon going back to sit down again, I think because of being bored or annoyed with a singing character, though this may be a false memory regarding certain details. I am not sure, as I neither wrote the name of the cartoon nor time seen at any earlier point in my journals.

It is probably relevant that this year, starting fifth grade on the 30th of August, I mostly got my school clothes from the hall closet and changed in the bathroom before sometimes “racing” back through the hallway to the living room to leave to wait for the school bus. (For the year after this, the volume of clothes I had took up more space and they were mostly kept in the room-length sliding-door closet in the southwest room - my father’s room at that time.)

(There may be a subtle connection with my “Poor Little Dinosaur” dream from 1965, from about a year before attending any school, and “identifying” with it on one level - it was of the same general size and appearance as here.)