The Fan Above

The fan above my head.

The fan above my bed.

The fan above I dread.

Many nights in my half-awake slumber, I look up and see the menacing five-blade fan light above our bed. It calls to me and causes me to act in ways I cannot explain rationally. But then again I am asleep, mostly...

A few years ago I started having sleep related awakenings, where I would wake up, but not really be awake. I am essentially in a dream while I am conscious of my surroundings. I think this is because my eyes are open. But, somehow my mind is still going off the world of the dream and as we all know in dreams, anything goes.

The freakiest one for me came when I would go out to my car at work to take a nap. I was still in school and single, so I never got enough sleep. I was in the driver's seat and the car started rolling. I could not move to grab the wheel or slam on the brakes. All I could do was watch as I helplessly tried to force my body awake. But alas, the car was not really moving. It was just the craziness of the dream world taking over. I learned my lesson after that. I would only sleep in the passenger seat. Now that I think about it, was that really smarter?

There have been a couple of movies which give me the impression that if you die in your dream, you die in real life. One was Dreamscape with David Patrick Kelley and Dennis Quaid (in that order). The other movie was the Matrix. "The body cannot live without the mind." I am not sure if the Matrix counts since it is not really dreaming. Or is it?

But back to our ceiling fan. The other day I was standing on the bed to get up there to do something with the fan. Knowing that I was not really awake, this really freaked my wife out.

I was telling my wife that I wanted to put some ribbon up there and study it for awhile when awake. The theory is that when I am in this dream state, seeing the ribbon will help me see how ridiculous it all is and just go back to sleep. But I don't know. The ribbon could come to life, crawl up to the top and undo the fan support causing the ceiling fan to come crashing down on our legs.

I know these instances seem silly, but in the dream it all makes sense. There is something about that fan hanging above our beds, whether it is oscillating or not, that just makes it a perfect vehicle of sabotage. And this brings me to the game aspect of the dream. Somehow and in some way, a game is going on in these dreams. Like, little people the size of ants are teaming up against us and, like gremlins, are messing with our electronics. Or it may not be little people at all. It may be the electronics themselves. Or it is normal size people, but somehow they control things in the room while we are not in there.

Many times I am concerned about my wife in this half awake dream state. I will continually ask her if she is okay. Over and over again. I suppose I am really concerned about her safety. Add to that the fact that she is pregnant right now and it only serves to make the paranoia worse.

I am sure you are wondering if I am cuckoo, but it is a dream. The problem is that it is a dream that is making its way into the real world. I suppose that is every dream's goal.