why is it so hard to understand?

In that situation, you may have known that you were dreaming, but you probably forgot what that meant.

When I told my folks about lucid dreaming, one brought up an interesting point. He claimed he always knew he was dreaming, otherwise he wouldn't be doing such odd stuff in his dreams. I rebuked that we probably always know that we are dreaming (for our own safety in real life, we must instinctively know when we dream. Think about it.), but we hardly ever realize what that knowledge means.

"I always know I'm dreaming. Otherwise I wouldn't be doing such odd things!"
"You don't really know you're dreaming. Otherwise, why waste your time on such odd things?"

Really, the only black and white part of this case seems to be the people's viewpoints on each side of the case.

I agree on the point that control, vividness, ect. don't effect if you are lucid or not. Rather, it is the amount of awareness that it is a dream. Let me make this easier by defining a semi-lucid. Since a full lucid is defined by conscious realization of your dream state, we can define semi lucidity as "being partially aware that you are in a dream" or, more accurately, "Knowing your are dreaming while inside a dream without coming to a conscious realization."

I have had many dreams that follow this quite well. I've had situations where out of the blue I explain a random event by telling a DC "oh, don't worry, thats just because this is a dream." but those are just words to my "conscious self" and full lucidity is not there. It's almost like doublethink, if you know what that is. You know that you can do things because it is a dream but it is the real world at the same time. And no, before you say it. These are not just non-lucids with control. Theres a huge difference. The process of doublethink ensures that there are both all the laws of the reals world present yet at the same time there are no laws present.

Anyhow, I think thats enough trying to explain the semi for now. And by all means, think in black and white. Think that there are just lucids and non-lucids if you like. Just realize that there are different levels of non-lucidity that lead right up to the door of full lucidity. Call it a non-lucid if you will, it's still called a semi lucid to me.

HA nice one. The guys right at the end of the day its all going to come down to peoples views on the matter. no one is really right or wrong with it. The pionts which are right are the common pionts only because everyone will agree with them and then say that the pionts are right because of everyone agreeing with them.