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As I lay down to sleep last night my thoughts very quickly degenerated into nonsense sentences which is often my experience of hypnagogia.

In the morning I had a LUCID DREAM!

I was upstairs in the physics classroom and I was trying to make my way out of it. Trying to leave the room went on for quite some time [from what I can remember]. There were lots of male pupils I didn't recognise, so I was probably in the wrong class. They looked a year or so younger than me. I feel like they may have looked a bit similar to one another although not quite clones. I was more concerned with getting out of the room, presumably to my next lesson.

The classroom seemed to have lots of exits all around and the other pupils were moving backwards and forwards around the classroom in lots of lines in different directions, around the desks and to the various exits. It was a slightly unnatural pattern of movement. I remember this had the result of delaying my access to the exits. At one point I think I saw out of a window or doorway from the physics classroom and could see that it was high up overlooking a large hall with a light wooden floor which might have been a large sports hall or assembly hall.

As I slowly made my way out of the classroom around the other pupils, for some bizarre reason I kept repeating a phrase out loud in French, "Je suis [...something I can't remember]" [It would be nice if I was saying that I am dreaming, but that wasn't it.] I have a feeling I might've been trying to weird out the other pupils or somehow assert myself to help me get out of the room. That's the only thing I can remember about the end of the phrase, a vague impression that I was saying something a little odd about myself.

The next thing I remember is that I was coming out of the classroom or had just stepped out of it and I was either trying to think of the way out of the building or possibly an indistinct DC might have been asking me about it - if they were there at all, they were very faintly defined so maybe I was just talking to myself [in my head?]. I saw steps that seemed to go out onto a small felt covered roof and I think there was a bright light greyish sky. I don't think I actually went out there. I may have been looking through a glass door - those details weren't clear.

At this point I remember confidently thinking to myself that I DO know the way out of this building, that it's down these (wide, darkly coloured) steps. I don't remember the exact thought process that I had now - I may not have thought many or any words to myself at all but I very quickly seemed to attain LUCIDITY [I expect I just subconsciously remembered that this building recurs in a lot of dreams about school and moving down steps to the front of a building at the school seems to be a big DREAM SIGN in itself - it happens a lot. School itself is one of my biggest DREAM SIGNS, so is losing my school timetable, my timetable being incomplete or confusing, not having the right books, and not being able to find my way around, or classrooms and other parts of buildings moving around. In this case I'd certainly been struggling to find my way around but it seemed to be the moment that I did find the way onto those steps that brought on the possibility of lucidity].

I decided to do a REALITY CHECK as I was walking down the stairs. I held my nose and tried to breathe through it, a little unsure how well that might work I think, but it worked instantly. I must've held it for less than a second and just the momentary feeling of being able to breathe was enough for me. I was LUCID! I felt pretty happy. I probably smiled though I wasn't aware of it, just aware of the burst of happiness for a moment. At this point I thought to myself that this was the second time I had become lucid in this dream - that I had been lucid quite a bit earlier in the dream, so I reflected to myself that I must've lost lucidity earlier on [The thing is I don't recall the earlier parts of this dream at all and when I woke up I had severe doubts that I actually had been lucid an extra time earlier on - it's just as likely or more likely that it was a false memory, maybe created by the dream].

I instinctively knew at this point that I needed to focus on keeping the dream going. This time I didn't try and do my usual effort of trying to focus on the details or spin around. I just said to myself that I would stay in the dream because I hadn't got a lot of time [as in, I needed to continue it now as there were things to be done and maybe wouldn't be time later, or something a bit like that - as I reflect on it now it wasn't the most logical thought process but it did calm down the initial joy and excitement I had felt, though I was probably still a bit excited at this point] and I began rushing down the stairs more quickly towards the glassy doorway and windows that led out of the front of the building.

The dream then kind of blurred out I think. I think I remained calm [which is a big improvement on my usual self-defeating disappointment and apprehension of thinking "I'm going to wake up"
- it will be great to move past that and not do that in future] but as I tried to observe the dream scenery now there was absolutely nothing there. It was just black and empty. I remembered a suggestion I read on dreamviews and shouted "MORE VIVID" and something else which might've been "MORE LUCIDITY" [technically probably not what I wanted to have given I was waking up, but hey, I was trying]. I can't remember if any more imagery came into my head at all at this point. If it did it would likely have been a consciously induced daydream image in my mind's eye rather than any continuation of the dream. I was awake now. I did try and remain still and try to go back to sleep for a short while but it didn't work.

I was quite happy to just wake up and work on my dream recall of my first LUCID DREAM in about five months or more! It's also the first time I've done the nose-holding RC in a dream and quite possibly the first time I've done a confirmatory REALITY CHECK rather than my more usual detective work to gain initial lucidity.

5/30/11 during a late nap

It was raining and I was at home getting ready to go to the store because my son needed wipes or something. It took me a minute because I couldn't decide what I should wear. I felt like I was taking too long and didn't want to get caught in the storm. I picked up my son and was walking to the store. I might've been heading to my car. Next I remember walking across the parking lot.

This morning.

I was in a strange place where half of the town was sitting on water. I was trying to leave, but the roads and everything would shake and wave every now and then and I had to hold on to something. I remember someone explaining to me how they got half the town on the water and I thought it was weird that they would want to do that. I start to drive on the road and am going uphill into a curve. I see two exits, each with a weird symbol, might have been a single number on each one, can't remember though. As I came up on the two exits I couldn't decide which one would take me out of town. So I slow down, realizing I'm stopping traffic and I ask a guy that's coming out of the tunnel in front of me, which one goes out of town. He pointed at the other one and said it went to a bank. Suddenly I see people in line at the exit he pointed at. So I get out of the car and start to go up the other one and there are stairs. When I get to the top I remember it being another place like a bank.

I leave and am driving when my sister gets in the car and tells me she needs to drive around to the bank. I go around once, she said I did it wrong or didn't put the money in right. So I drive around again. This is all I can remember.