Blue_Opossum

Night of July 5, 1964. Sunday.



One of the first vivid and somewhat lucid nightmares I remembered with more clarity as a young child is this one from age three. Woody Woodpecker is driving a car (which is rendered in my dream as a real car, that is, not like a cartoon), which seems like my brother-in-law Verdell’s car. Knothead and Splinter are also in the front seat. He accidentally drives off a very steep embankment (which is likely modeled after the road up to Grandad Bluff). His car rolls downward and out of control over the very steep incline with my dream showing (as if I am hovering in front of the scene) terrified expressions from the three of them, sometimes taking on an almost anthropomorphic appearance. His car does not turn over or completely wreck; it just keeps tipping forward a bit, dropping and moving forward. I seem to be hovering closer in front of his car at one point (almost as if switching between being in front of a movie screen as to actually being there, though incorporeal). It seemed to go on for a very long time. This was a late nighttime dream, but which seemed to “reset” and repeat near early morning. It did not cause me to wake with a start as with other nightmares.

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This dream is likely my first remembered “failed flight” waking transition. The birds, even though cartoons, are trapped in the car and there is no apparent escape. There is a transmutation of “I am falling” (waking consciousness shift though sustained here in real-time foreshadowing) to “they are falling” as well as “I cannot drive” to “he cannot drive”. This dream was very likely the result of the memory of riding in a car on the road up to Grandad Bluff and the sustained wariness I had in real life for a time.

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