Blue_Opossum

* How I Accidentally Broke an Old Lady Stick Insect's Arm *

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, 04-01-1972 at 10:01 AM (252 Views)

Morning of April 1, 1972. Saturday.

Dream #: 1,930-01. Optimized 1 minute 30 second read.

I am on my own, walking through downtown Arcadia, Florida, in the late morning.

Eventually, protoconsciousness (secondary consciousness that emerges at a specific point between dreaming and waking) personifies on my right (north of where I am standing).

It manifests as an old lady carrying groceries in brown paper grocery sacks. We are standing near the curb. (Even though I was eleven years old in real life when I had this dream, she was about a foot shorter than me.) She is wearing a headscarf similar to my mother’s and is cheerful and friendly towards me at first.

I think she needs help crossing the street (even though I see no traffic) and carrying her groceries. I take a paper sack filled with her groceries and hold it in my left arm.

When I pull on her left arm with my right hand, I suddenly seem to be holding a small tree branch, so I become puzzled. I think I grabbed her wooden cane by mistake. However, it turns out to be her left arm that resembles that of a stick insect. (There is no blood or gore.) She is now an anthropomorphic stick insect with the head of an old lady. She raises her right fist and yells at me.

Dream content meanings:

Main Category: REM Atonia (Physical Immobility While Sleeping) Influence on Dream Narratives and Outcomes.

My dream’s outcome: The woman’s arm coming off confirms my lack of physical mobility while sleeping. (This event is a protoconsciousness mechanism serving as a wakefulness catalyst.) This type of dream (lack of arm mobility) is usually the second to occur near a sleep cycle’s beginning. (Here, I had been awake for a time before going back to sleep on a Saturday morning.) The first is losing leg mobility (walking, losing my footing, and rapidly sliding on my heels while falling with corresponding myoclonus).

My expectation of crossing the street: Anticipation of leaving the dream state to achieve wakefulness.

There is influence from the “helping a little old lady cross the street” trope from television and comic strips.

“Similarly, he (Herbert Silberer) has shown that the conclusions of some dreams or some divisions in their content merely signify the dreamer’s own perception of his sleeping and waking.”