Nightmares

I suck at having nightmares.

This has been true for a while.  When I was younger I had nightmares like a normal person.  I remember being chased by monsters, waking up just as death was seemingly a given...  They mostly came while I was sick, but I had them.

Not anymore.

Sometimes I have dreams that are clearly trying to go dark.  The early feeling of vague dread gives it away.  There might be a monster, or zombies, or something else.  They still come for me.

But things are different now.  These days, when I realize that something is dream hunting me, I respond with oddly sensible choices for a dream.  They fail.  Nightmares can be persistent that way.  But now, things end differently.

Now, when the monsters get close, when the threats become real, when things have gone too far...

I kill the monsters.

This isn't a motivational speech.  That's the real plot arc I experience in my nightmares these days, when I have them at all.  It's not particularly aggressive.  When it's clear that they intend to attack me, I glare at them.  And then I force them out of existence.  Through sheer force of will.  They burn out in a flash of white.  Once I woke up just after this, only to realize that I had just sleep-ordered my bedroom "No, You. Will. NOT." 

That can be interesting.

There is one exception.  The closest thing I still have to a real nightmare does recur.  Not often, but probably at least once a year.  I remember, months later, that at the start of the term, I registered to take an introductory calculus course.  I'm still modern me, so the rationale for this is always strained.  Once, I enrolled at my old high school just because I remembered classes being so... thorough... there.  More often, I just skipped over it to do the harder classes, but had to finally go back and finish off requirements.  I'm never scared of the class.  I'm scared of having ignored that I'm enrolled in a class that I haven't even gone to for MONTHS.  Of the threat that there might just be nothing I can do about it anymore.

These dreams end on the question, which is why I find them relevant here.  It's happened just often enough that my conscious mind can quickly cut through the fog of waking now with the simple news of: "You're fine.  You've passed all classes for forever."

In other words, the closest thing I now have to nightmares is the dawning realization that I forgot to bother with something that turned out to matter more than it should.  In the high school variant, I actually remember debating if it even mattered.  If anyone would even notice.

These are my bad dreams. 

I have good ones too.

They're nice.

A Python Ate It

When I was an undergrad, I pushed the limits of the dorm pet policy by keeping a 25 gallon aquarium in my room.  Its primary occupant wasn't a fish.  I had a lobster in there.  Not just a normal lobster: I had a bright blue one.  Obviously.  (This is a true story.  Blueness in lobsters is a rare genetic quirk akin to albinism.)

If you don't already know, lobsters are primarily scavengers.  But they're more than capable of being aggressive hunters if the need arises.  If you keep a lobster in a sparklingly clean aquarium and don't feed it very often, that need arises.  This is where the fun starts!  Strictly speaking, I was not supposed to have a pet lobster in the dorms.  I could have fish.  Fish were ok.  I was also supposed to keep the aquarium size below 10 gallons.  But questions like "Are lobsters fish?" and "How big is that beautiful, well-maintained aquarium?" are rarely of strong interest to liberal-minded RA's.  Also, I intentionally kept fish in there.  So it was a fish tank.  No one looks at a fish tank and gasps, "I need to write this guy up immediately."  People also rarely search your fish tank thinking you have stuff hidden in there.

In reality, however, I had a lobster tank with some very nice fish in it.  Blue gouramis mostly.  And some black mollies.  I fed the lobster often enough, but occasionally it would get hungry anyway.  If the lobster got hungry, it would do exactly what you'd expect it to do.  It would hunt, murder, and slowly consume one of the fish.  That process was fun to watch.

This had an amusing real world side effect.  Due to lobster-related complications, the population of fish in my aquarium maintained an erratic downward slide. So from time to time, I would head down to the local pet store to buy more.  The local pet store was owned by an intimidating lesbian who was very passionate about her pets.  She had a generous replacement policy when it came to fish, because her sales tanks were very clean and her pets were all exceptionally healthy.  She would interrogate her customers about the conditions you were taking her fish home to so that they would have maximal chances of survival.  If she felt you had too many fish in your tank already, she'd decline to sell you more.  If your tank sounded dirty somehow, no fish for you.  Sick fish recently?  Sounds like you should give that situation some time before taking home more fish.

But I could pass that test easily.  I had a reasonably large tank with a small number of fish in it.  I had lots of live plants in there (which is great for the water).  I had both a primary and secondary filter.  I cleaned the tank at least once a month.  I was a model customer.

So it eventually aroused suspicion when I kept buying fish while claiming not to own very many.  When grilled on how I could be the owner of just four fish when she could recall me having bought more like 20, I simply explained that my lobster kept eating them.  Alarmed, she denounced the compatibility of lobsters with small freshwater fish.  I smiled calmly and highlighted that her objection was not news to me.  I reminded her that my tank was in fine shape, and stressed that I had never once returned a dead fish for a replacement.  Finally I pointed to her tank of feeder goldfish and questioned why she'd have that if she had concerns that the fish she was selling might get eaten.

She was extremely annoyed with me after that, but eventually resumed selling me any damn fish I wanted.  I was a good customer, and my tank really was extremely well maintained.

That story got me thinking recently.  I know a bunch of people who like adopting pets.  Taking foster dogs and cats is a point of pride for some.  People build communities around the idea.  Everyone agrees that there are so many shelter dogs that need adopting.

I wonder if you could just keep showing up at shelters and adopting more and more pets.  When eventually confronted with questions about the last cat or dog you adopted, simply note: "Well, yeah.  A python ate it."  Then act puzzled that the shelter people don't understand what happens when you have cats and dogs running around under your ten foot python.  Perhaps gesture at the tanks full of feeder mice and rats typically maintained for that purpose.

I bet someone has already tried this.  I'm curious how that worked out.  I bet the shelter people got mad at them too.