Dear Amritsar,
I'm just a regular person with dreams. The kind that come when you're asleep, I mean; life has already slipped a knockout drug into the morning coffee of the dreams out of my waking hours and taken photographs of them in compromising positions with the dreams of my next door neighbour and threatened to expose them if they ever showed up in my conscious awareness again. Or, I just don't have much of an imagination. Who can tell?
In one dream, I am walking towards a bus stop just as the vehicle is pulling out; the ad on the side of the bus is for a brand of toothpaste called "Ha Ha, Sucker!" In another, I am at a train station; I know my train will be leaving in five minutes, but I can't find the right platform (the squawk on the PA system sounds suspiciously like: "Ha - crackle - a, su - crackle - er"). In another, I am in a cab on the way to the airport, but the plane will be taking off in five minutes (my sleeping brain seems to forget that you have to be at an airport seven hours before the plane takes off to get through security). I think you can see a pattern emerging (in that last dream, the DJ on the cab radio is announcing that the last song was "Disconnected Flight" by the band Ha Ha and the Suckerfish).
I recently read that dreams may be doorways to other dimensions. If that is true (and a scientist said it, so who am I to question the assertion?), why are my counterparts in other universes such yutzes?
Sav On a Rolla
Hey, Babe,
The multiverse is vast. There are an infinite number of realities in which your counterparts are yutzes. There are an infinite number in which your counterparts are putzes. There are even an infinite number where your counterparts are schmendricks - the multiverse contains infinite variety with infinite annoyability.
Having said that, there are also an infinite number of universes in which your counterpart is a mensch. The real question here is: why do you dream of the versions of yourself that cause you anxiety rather than the ones that would make you feel better about your life?
Anybody who knows me (which is nobody, because is it really possible to "know" another human being?) will tell you that Herr Doctor Freud and I have never really gotten along. This is partially because of his habit of borrowing 50 Marks until the beginning of the month and never paying it back (it's not like he can't afford it; I suspect he was compensating for not being properly toilet trained until he was 37; he would have appreciated that diagnosis). But, mostly, it was because his theories about women seemed to come from a universe where women didn't exist.
Despite this, some of his basic concepts do conform roughly to human experience. In this case, I am reminded of his statement: "Every dream contains a wish. Last night, I dreamed that you would lend me 50 Marks until the beginning of the month - it's not for me, it's for my recently deceased mother. How could you possibly refuse?"
I couldn't. Herr Doctor F. can be very persuasive when he's not smugly sucking on a big fat cigar.
I'm not suggesting that you want to miss a train, plane or automobile. Dreams that come from other dimensions are subtler than that, like the aroma of weak tea or the meaning of a David Lynch film. Your dreams could mean that you are worried that you are going to fail a big test you have coming up...every few days. (If your dimensional dreams were about failing a big test, it could mean that you were concerned about missing a travel opportunity. In dreamatology, this is known as The Law of Reciprocal Improbability.) Or, it could indicate that you should stop eating four course meals before you go to bed.
Dreams can be inscrutable bastards.
By the way, Bill Nae the Science Bae doesn't believe that dreams come from other universes. "If the theory that dreams are the random firing of neurons that our brains interpret as we start coming out of sleep was good enough for our parents, and their parents, and their parents before them," he stated, "it's good enough for me!"
And, who am I to argue with Bill Nae the Science Bae? He's on TV!
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service's sex, love and technology columnist at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: That's right, the last names in this article don't have five syllables. Not all questions come from people who live in the United States of Vesampucceri, you know. Honestly, Earth Prime 1-6-7-1-8-2 dash Psi needs to get over itself!