Dreams, Osmonds and Their Impersonators, and Glow-in-the-Dark Teeth

This guy isn't a bona fide Osmond, but he has some serious Osmond teeth going in his favor.

   

                                                                         

pretty cool representation of a kaleidoscope eye, or else a bad case of conjunctivitis: you make the call

the singing portion of the tooth-blinding clan

I went to sleep at midnight because most normal people who don't work odd shifts do that sort of thing. I was awakened a moment ago in the midst of a bizarre dream in which I had somehow joined forces with a band of Osmond impersonators who actually looked like the real thing and performed concerts to packed houses. It was unclear as to whether or not these Osmond impersonators were owning up to being mere impersonators or were pretending to be George and Olive's actual spawn. I wasn't one of the Osmond impersonators for  variety of reasons, one of which would be that I have braces on my teeth. I don't recall ever seeing an Osmond with braces on his or her teeth, although maybe I just missed it and it really did happen. Even when my braces come off,  my teeth may look nice enough, but they will not have that Osmond quality about them. Furthermore, braces or no braces, I don't bear the slightest resemblance to any known member of the Osmond family.

The Osmond impersonators were also secret fighters of crime, and I believe both their musical escapades and their fight for truth, justice, and the American way were being chronicled in a reality series. I somehow got caught in the middle of one of their concerts in which people were seated at round tables of eight or so. "Donny" was strolling between the tables singing a particularly mindless song, which may have been Andrew Gold's "Lonely Boy." At one point he was standing near me as I was crouching near the floor and trying to hide because my medical school supposedly has a clause about not appearing in any reality show without the consent of the medical school administration. I can understand why they woudn't want their students sullying the reputation of the medical school by appearing as fools on reality shows, and it's a private institution, so its administration presumably has greater leeway to set more stringent policies than publicly funded medical schools would have the freedom to establish. Still, I'm not sure if that's really one of the school's rules or if I just dreamed it.  Tomorrow I'll have to look it up in the materials I have been sent.

Anyway, "Donny" was singing what was probably the Andrew Gold song, and he walked very near to where I was crouching. The lights were low, and a spotlight was following "Donny" as he casually wandered between tables, sometimes pausing to put his arm on the shoulder of a particularly goo-goo-eyed female. Dinner had been served at this concert. Dinner was Kentucky Fried Chicken, served in the typical classy buckets with the Colonel's mug boldly emblazoned upon them.  Filming  (or taping; I pay very little attention to which is which, and couldn't tell you whether most shows are filmed or taped, or why, except I think filming is more expensive and perhaps of higher quality) for the reality TV show was going on at that very minute, and the people at the table nearest me were packed in so tightly that I could not have crawled under their table even had I possessed the nerve to do so. The spotlight was nearing me, which would have indicated that I was likely to end up in reality show footage. I crawled away from "Donny," but he seemed to be following me everywhere I went. How's that for a nightmare: being stalked by a "Donny Osmond" impersonator?

Anyway, I scrambled on the floor to escape the spotlight encompassing "Donny."  At one table, I saw an empty KFC bucket, so I grabbed it and put it over my head. This limited the camera's view of my face, but also limited my vision. It didn't matter, as a lady at a nearby table apparently coveted the look I had created, and grabbed the bucket off my head and placed it on her own head. By this time, I had created a little distance between myself and "Donny" and was able to successfully make it out of the dinner theatre or whatever the venue where the performance was being held was called. 

As I went through the door, there was a bar. Only one person was seated at the bar. I seated myself several stools away from her and admitted to the bartender the obvious, which was that I was not of age but just needed to chill for a few minutes. He filled a 7-up for me free of charge.  The other lady seated at the bar moved to a stoool right next to me. "What brings you to these parts?" she asked me.

I told her that I was working with the "Osmond" group and that we were on the cusp of catching up with a major organized crime syndicate. The lady took off her sunglasses, and I saw that she was Leah Remini, who was a major player in the mob we were attempting to bust. She smiled, got up,  and ran out of the building. 

As I was debating whether to go back into the dinner theatre at the risk being of caught in reality show footage so that I could warn "Donny" that I had inadvertantly tipped off Leah Remini,  I woke up.  Even if my dream isn't terribly frightening, I often have trouble going back to sleep, so I started a journal of my dreams a long time ago. Originally it was written out in composition books. I no longer write out anything other than class notes  in longhand if I can avoid it, so using the computer is a logical alternative. My dreams took a turn for the morbid and alarming after a few unfortunate incidents in my life. I still have those sorts of nightmares on occasion, but they're becoming less frequent. A lot of my dreams now are not so much frightening as nonsensical.

I have a history of bizarre dreams. When I was very young, as in roughly two years of age, I didn't quite comprehend the concept of dreams, and thought whatever had happened in my dreams had happened in real life.  It was confusing to my mother when I would bring up things that I or we had supposedly done. She eventually put the puzzle pieces together and realized that I was recounting my dreams. She explained the concept to me, and I grasped it reaonably well for a two-year-old.

Then I got the idea that I needed to tell my parents about my dreams immediately if I awakened in the night after having one. I'd crawl out of my crib (I slept in a crib through my kindergarten year because it fit me more comfortably than did a twin-sized or junior bed. My mom kept the side low so that I could get myself in and out easily] and into my parents' bed, where I would wake up both parents and describe to them my most recent dream in minute detail. They tolerated this for what must have been for a few months. Then I remember my mom telling me, "Alexis, if you have a really bad dream that scares you, it's perfectly OK for you to come wake us and tell us about it, but if it's not a scary dream, you need to just go back to sleep. You can tell us about it in the morning."

I tried this approach, but I found that I often didn't remember the dream the next morning.  so I decided to go back to Plan A, which was to wake my parents again to tell them of my dreams. It was my dad who thought of providing me with composition books so that I could record my dreams. I was an early reader and writer, and had the very basics of phonics down by the time I was three. (Keep using those refrigerator letter and number magnets, parents. It's amazing how much a normally bright child will pick up  from manipulating them on a refrigerator with just a little adult input. It's much better for young children than computer games or playing with parents' phones. My pseudoaunt, who taught kindergarten before practicing law, said she didn't have a single student who came to kindergarten without at least knowing letter names who had the letter magnets on their refrigerators at home.  The concept seems too simple to be effective, but it works.) My spelling tended to be phonetic rather than standard, but I or most adults could make sense of what I had written.  My parents would only interrupt if they noticed my light was on for what they considered to be too long. They were fine with the idea of me taking five to ten minute to record a dream if it meant I would not wake them up.

Every morning after which I had dreamt, I would take my composition book to breakfast with me and would read to my parents what I had written or would use my writings as a guide for retelling the dream in my own words.  We would discuss the dream and why I might have dreamt what I did. It created in me an interest in dreams which I still have. I've read numerous books on the topic. Freud had tons to say on the subject, as did Carl Jung and Frederic Perls.  Much of what Freud had to say seems a bit over the top to me. 

One more recent dream-related publication I enjoyed was Rosalynd Clements' The Analyzing Your Dreams Dictionary. I ordered it as a child and had it sent to my aunt's house because I was concerned that my mother might consider it too New Age for a little Catholic girl to be reading, but my mom heard about it, read it, and said it was fine for me to read. She did put a stop to my original purpose for buying the book., which was to analyze my peers' dreams for profit, but she otherwise had no issue with the book, as she said it was respectful of religion in general. 

Mrs. Clements (I'm not sure if she holds a doctorate or not) bases much of her theory on the works of Jung. While there is a section of term definitions, much of it is written in narrative and is highly readble. As a note of warning, sometimes the author is writing someting that makes perfect sense, then she'll abruptly go off on a tangent about black goo instead of milk  coming from someone's mother's breasts. I assume someone she knows must have had such a dream or it would not have made it into her publication, but still I find it far-fetched. That's one dream I've yet to have. Any psychology-related text must be taken with at least a grain or two of salt, anyway.

I'll do my best to forget about the Osmond impersonators and Leah Remini  and go back to sleep, but it is not going to be an easy task. Whenever I close my eyes, those big white Osmond teeth show up, almost as though they glow in the dark, which begs the question: do the real Osmond teeth glow in the dark?

P.S. Just imagine if the girl with kaleidoscope eyes mated with an Osmond with glow-in-the-dark teeth. Wouldn't the product of that union be a sight to behold?