Very Strange Dreams.

I'm sure we've all had 'em at some point.

I'm not talking about your average "First Day of School in your Underwear" dream (although those do happen to people).

I'm not talking about nightmares. I very rarely have real nightmares, but when they occur, they are of such a nature that leaves me wide-awake and unwilling to shut my eyes again for hours. 

What I'm talking about are the dreams that are just plain weird. Sometimes in a Lewis Carroll way, sometimes in a Dr. Seuss way, simply bizarre.

I can honestly say I've had some doozies.

For instance, some time back in 2007 (I wouldn't know this unless I'd written it down)

Have you ever seen those little gooey-men toys that you throw against the wall and they stick? And then they kind of cartwheel down? Well, I dreamed that I had two of them: one green, one dark purple. I don't know why, because I've only ever seen them in pinks, blues, and highlighter yellows. Despite having neither faces nor mouths, they could speak. The green one made me shrink somehow (a la Alice in Wonderland) and we were running around the fringe of trees in my backyard, hiding in the underbrush. We were hiding because the dark purple one stretched and stretched and stretched until he was three stories tall...and had evidently decided that world domination was a good alternative to his wall-clinging career. I don't remember why the purple guy was chasing me in the dream (resident human threat? needed a good PR rep? Revenge for being thrown against the wall? who knows!) But I do remember a mouse's-eye-view of my yard, dodging insects and ducking under sticks and dead leaves, being thoroughly grossed out by my slimy green rescuer.

Then there was this other dream, back in give or take 2009

I dreamed that I was playing around in an old house made of wooden planking somewhere in the middle of a clearing. There were a few other teens there with me, none of whom I recognized. One climbed out the attic window and onto the roof, and I followed. There was a large forest at the back of the house, and there were two men with shovels and a bulldozer standing near it. I climbed down the side of the house with the others and we found that the two men were staring at a huge red "x" on the ground. While the other teens stopped to talk to the men, I ignored them and went into the woods with one or two others, playing around. I was jumping off of stumps and boulders, climbing on things that probably weren't sturdy (a bit like I do in real life, come to think of it) and suddenly a hawk flew over my head with the Civil War's Rebel Flag emblazoned on its back.

(weird, right? It gets stranger)

Confused and excited, we ran back and told the two men with the shovels, who promptly organized an expedition into the woods to find said hawk. They were jabbering on about some kind of lost Civil War treasure. I wandered away from the group and started walking along logs, picking up shiny rocks (you know, basically just being the way I was at that age). I heard wingbeats and thought it was the hawk coming back, but it was much bigger. (Here's where it gets really unusual.)

     A bald eagle standing some five feet high lands in the clearing on a wide branch. Its back was to me, and I couldn't see its face. Then, in a moment of perfect silence, it turned its head to one side. 

The bird's left eye was a compass.

Mesmerized, I stared into it and watched the direction in which the needle spun. I called to the others and they saw the eagle as it took off. We headed North, and for some reason we were supposed to be looking for a water moccasin snake. One of them was supposed to be carrying a map in its fangs. No really, like you catch it and hold its head steady and ink comes dripping out of the fangs to form a map on a rock. I was in the creek up to my knees looking for snakes when I woke up.

And to conclude, one of my very strangest dreams.

I had a dream one Saturday night, four or five years ago, that I was walking around my house, looking for something. I didn't quite know what it was. Then I walked into the classroom (actually a large bonus room used for schooling purposes) and found a boy that I did not know. He was small, thin, about twelve years old with short blonde hair and a sharp nose. I was surprised, and rather short-temperedly asked him who he was and what he was doing in my house. He never answered me, but he turned and looked into my eyes and I've never quite been able to describe the emotion on his face. I can't even remember what it was anymore.
I woke up rather confused.
At church that morning, a speaker came to talk about older orphans in Eastern Europe and how they needed love, prayer, and support, especially since it is the younger children who are usually adopted. At a little table in the church foyer were little cards with pictures of specific boys and girls from the children's homes in the specific country who needed prayer. My sister picked one up with two young boys on it, but I didn't see the card until we got home. When she showed it to us at lunch, I got the surprise of my life!
The second boy on the card was the little boy I'd seen in my dream.
And that's a true story.