Sunday, May 30, 2010

Weird dreams, Part Two

The night before last, I dreamed I was going someplace with Shootin' Buddy. We were walking down a sidewalk in a kinda run-down urban neighborhood. I remember the sky was clear and blue, and all the vegetation was very green and verdant.

We were passing an out-of-business, vacant service station on our right; not a gas station, but a mechanic's shop, where the service bays came right to the sidewalk. The doors to the bays were open. There were these two dudes coming the other way down the sidewalk and they actually stepped into the street to swing wide around us. Shootin' Buddy was a little ahead of me and to my right, and as they passed him and drew abreast of me, I suddenly got this sinking feeling in my gut, like 'something bad is about to happen right now.'

The dude closer to me starts to say something like "Give it over..." and his shirttail has been brushed back and there's a revolver clearly visible in the front of his waistband. I'm trying to yell something to Shootin' Buddy as I'm pulling my own pistol and just wishing the guy would run away and I don't have a clear view of his partner 'cause he's in the way and he goes for his gat and I'm frozen on the trigger and I reallyreallyreally don't want to shoot this guy why won't he just leave? We're kinda circling, with him stepping to the side and me actually backing into the service bays and he's going to point the gun at me and BANG! BANG!

My own gun surprises me.

And now the bad guy is down and the other bad guy is down and Shootin' Buddy has his pistol in one hand and is on his cell phone and I guess the cops are on the way, and here's where it got really weird the way dreams do, because with no thought to continuity issues, the guy lying there bleeding suddenly has an M16 (A1, Vietnam-era, if you must know,) in one hand and a magazine in the other, and he's laughing at me, and making to load the gun. "Buddy, just drop the gun. Don't make me shoot you again. I'm not kidding."

And apparently he did shoot me because in the next scene I'm in a rehab ward (cleverly filled in from my motorcycle experiences) and everybody was telling me that I was going to be okay and I did okay and all's well that ends well, and then we segued to more normal dream fodder.

That was the first time I've ever had a "frozen on the trigger" dream (that I can recollect, anyway,) and it left me a little rattled, actually.

23 comments:

Skip said...

Just means your normal.

Kristophr said...

My subconscious does that to me when it's in a bad mood ... my variant is pull trigger and nothing happens.

This usually results in a lucid dream, where I do something outrageous, like kill the perp by whipping out an FGMP-15, or telekinetically throwing a handy truck at him, or I'll just uproot a phone pole and whack him with it.

At that point my subconscious gets really mad, and cuts out the sound and pictures.

Takes about 30 seconds at that point to wake up enough to move ... sleep paralysis is an interesting thing ...

The Duck said...

I've been told that that is a sign to go to the range, and train

Tam said...

The dude with the gun looked just like Kid Rock.

No doubt due to a life-size display ad I'd seen in the booze section of the grocery store earlier.

Divemedic said...

A pshrink would tell a man that the dream is a sign that the dreamer is having worries about inadequacy.

Divemedic said...

The other half of the comment:

but I don't know if they consider women to be worried about those kinds of things.

Tam said...

That's because a pshrink would never tie it to something obvious, like a use-of-force discussion I'd read on the internet recently or anything like that.

To some people, it's never just a cigar. ;)

Brad K. said...

Tam,

This is the concealed carry version of the "didn't realize I was nekkid until I got there" dream.

You are just feeling a bit unprepared, worried you left something out.

The first step is to reassure yourself that your preparations are complete, that you have thought through, and accepted, that you prefer consequences to actions, rather than face consequences to inaction.

Regular training again should help calm some of your concern. Talking through the dream with a trusted friend as if it were a training scenario will be good.

Since you are really everyone in your dream, the M16A1 thing is gaming out pulling a bigger gun when it is useful.

And maybe you are just dissatisfied with yourself, for leaving some emails unanswered.

Anonymous said...

Dreams are about thoughtful reaction.
Reality is about conditioned reaction.

Proactive training, reactive training, scenario training, repetitive training, and plain ol' training training.

Maybe an element of concern of inadequacy of SB, too ;)

AT

Anonymous said...

Freud was full of crap. Dreams don't mean anything other than something you ate doesn't agree with you.
Word verification: hologyno - 3D porno?

Revolver Rob said...

I've always been told that dreams are often a manifestation of your worst fears.

Having had a few, "squeeze the trigger and no bang" dreams myself. The fastest and sure fire way to put the "rattle" to bed. Is to make sure the gun on your hip (the gun in your dream), works properly.

So, for me that means making sure the gun is shot and clean, before sticking it back in the holster. Usually, that does it for me, to ease my sense of rattled.

-Rob

John B said...

Everyone has these dreams, It's what you do with them that counts. Means you're not the paragon of invincibility you present as. Means that you are now, and have always been a human being.

That you have these moments, and are comfortable enough to be candid with anyone who can type your blog url into a browser......

I consider you twice the friend for your true strengths.

Joel said...

When I first started carrying a pistol I had this recurring dream where I was forced to draw and fire, and every time I did the pistol fell apart in my hands without going bang. I must have correctly interpreted the dream, because after I attended a couple of practical training classes I stopped having it.

I'm gonna go ahead and guess that that's not the right interpretation of your dream.

Will Brown said...

Rooting around in my Freudian cigar box, I find the question; "So, when's the wedding, already?".

Make a decision; pull the trigger ... get it?

I'm all deep that way. ;-)

LabRat said...

I'm going with classic anxiety dream, source of anxiety not necessarily specific.

Stingray gets the one where he goes to draw, but the gun's not loaded and all the magazines are the wrong kind and/or loaded with the wrong ammo. I get the one where I'm beating the hell out of someone who is just laughing it off. Which, really just means I need more range time so I can shoot them and have them laugh that off.

Robert Langham said...

Six more weeks of bad weather.

Matt said...

Usually mine involve not having ammo for my M-forgery close to hand or at all but believing I do right up until I pull the trigger and get nothing but a gut wrenching *click*.
Of course this is while a horde of zombies or psychopathic killers is battering down my front door. But I usually wake up in a cold sweat just before they actually get to me.

I'm pretty sure that's why I started leaving 5 full mags where I could get to them easily lol.

The Raving Prophet said...

The closest I get isn't the frozen on the trigger or the gun that won't fire, but the thirty pound trigger pull. I try to keep the sights on target, but it feels like the trigger has a longer pull than a DA revolver and I'm fighting a garage door spring.

The dreams only tend to come when I haven't shot in a while.

Matt G said...

As I believe I've mentioned to you before, mine usually have the trigger pull taking hundreds of pounds of pressure, or the hammer drops too slowly to ignite the primer.

Often the 100's of lbs or pressure trigger pull can be overcome in my dream, but the strain makes the sights waver so badly that I can't hit my target.

The sights refuse to come into focus, just like text never seems to be readable in my dreams. My hands often seems to resist my will to make it work.

The concern about being able to perform under pressure when the balloon goes up seems to be universal. We practice and imagine scenarios so that we can

Montie said...

Tam,

I used to have weird gun and badguy(s) dreams all the time when I first got into police work, but they subsided after a while. Some were similar to yours, several were similar to Matt G's. Most of the cops I know told me that they had them too at first.

Somebody told me it was due to starting to carry a gun, but I had carried and competed with guns for years before becoming a cop and had even had two shootings during robberies while in retail, but never had the dreams 'til I became a cop.

Weer'd Beard said...

Remember you know what its like to be in a rehab ward because you've been there.

You don't know what its like to be threatened and have to shoot somebody because you haven't been there.

That's just our mind riffing on an unknown variable.

You've trained for it to be like XYorZ, but will it REALLY be that way?

Phil said...

"That was the first time I've ever had a "frozen on the trigger" dream (that I can recollect, anyway,) and it left me a little rattled, actually."

While I have had the 100lb trigger pull dream, I've not had the frozen trigger finger dream.

Oh, and pray you don't get what I call "the jam-a-matic" dream. Whenever I get that one I feel a strong urge to call in sick to work so that I can stay home and clean every one of my firearms, whether they need it or not.

Dr. Feelgood said...

I have two variants: one where I'm making good hits to no effect and another where I'm calling good shots but seeing no impact on target. For whatever reason, my dream guns always function properly, I just can't seem to stop the threat.

At eleven I had my first dream about being shot (guns being the farthest thing from my household). As a super-kid-spy I left a BG in cuffs near a briefcase, which just happened to contain a Thompson. He but a burst through my upper back and I swear I felt the punctures before I woke up. Didn't go back to sleep that night.