Last night I had perhaps the most bizarre dream of my life. I had four false awakenings before becoming briefly lucid. The dream was very long and detailed and I got up and recorded the whole thing on my iPhone so I could remember details. I won't bore you with all the details, but the abridged version is this:

My wife and I were at some sort of entertainment venue with captain's chair reclining seating. A squabble broke out across the room between a man and woman who both appeared drunk. The man kept trying to drag me into their argument, so I pretended to be asleep. My eyes were closed, but I could still hear and see everything going on. The guy walked across the room right up to me and I remember thinking, "Gee, I hope this asshole leaves me alone!" The guy bent down and shook me, and I woke up! (False awakening #1). I wanted to leave, but my wife wanted to stay, so I left her the car keys and decided to walk home. A block from my house, I got lost. After a long and detailed series of misadventures, I ran into a man who was intent on having me visit his sports memorabilia shop. He insisted on writing down the address, date and time I should come visit the shop to view his baseball card collection, so, to get him to leave me alone, I handed him a piece of paper that had my grocery list on it and he jotted down the info on the back. I put the paper in my shirt pocket.

I remained lost and kept wandering the streets - until I suddenly woke up in bed at home. (False awakening #2) My wife and my father (who has been dead for 9 years) were in the bedroom and I was trying to explain to them this convoluted dream I had just had, but they seemed not to be listening. I finally gave up and went to sleep.

I awoke at 7:00am (Yes, I checked the digital clock!) with daylight coming through the window and decided to make a detailed dream journal entry right away before I forgot the dream details. I found a piece of paper in my shirt pocket, turned it over to write on it and was literally STUNNED to find the dream dude from the baseball card shop's handwriting on it! I was totally freaked out and kept yammering to my wife about the fact that I had physical proof that some dreams were real! (false awakening #3).

My wife was totally uninterested in what I was saying so I just laid there in bed thinking things over. Eventually it occurred to me that I might STILL be dreaming! AGAIN I awoke in bed !(false awakening #4). Not being sure at this point whether I was actually awake or in the midst of a possible lucid dream, I decided to try to float up into the air to see if I was lucid dreaming. It turns out I was! I was holding my wife's hand when I lifted off and stayed tethered to her by her grip while floating upside down with my feet towards the ceiling. Before I could even begin to exercise any sort of dream control, everything went black and I could feel hands grabbing both of my legs by the ankles and pulling my legs apart HARD - like they were trying to split a turkey wishbone! At this point, all thoughts of exerting dream control left me and feeling panicked, I started trying to call out for my wife to wake me up. Except that rather than calling out my wife's name as I was trying to do, I kept calling "Mom! Mom! Mom!" even though my mother wasn't even in the dream!

As it turns out, I actually WAS calling out in my sleep and my wife eventually woke me up when my calls awakened her. I IMMEDIATELY jumped out of bed and went to find my iPhone to record all this. I was so astounded by this dream and the multiple false awakenings that it took nearly 10 full minutes of various reality checks to convince me I actually WAS awake! What finally did convince me was taking my shopping list out of my shirt pocket and finding it was still just a shopping list with no information about a baseball card event at a sports memorabilia store written on the back.

That had to be the absolute WEIRDEST dream I have ever experienced! With all the false awakenings, I must have been hovering on the verge of becoming lucid through it's entirety. My biggest disappointment was in not calming myself and redirecting the dream when I finally DID get lucid, but at that point I really REALLY just wanted to get back to the reality of the waking world!