About Dreams

“That would be it,” groaned Professor Hisnibbs, coughing and spluttering, as he awoke from yet another one of his extraordinary dreams.  “I almost choke on a piece of bread in my dream and here I am, coughing as if I had been choking on the real thing. Am I awake or am I still asleep?” 

Shoving the disheveled bedclothes to one side, he pinched his arm, hard.  “Yes, yes, yes, of course I am awake.  Otherwise I wouldn’t feel that, would I?”  He rubbed the red patch on his arm, still excited by his near-death choking experience.  “This is the missing link…the link that proves my hypothesis is no longer a hypothesis, but a full-blown theory…but until I can prove it as such, it’s still a hypothesis!” 

He glanced at the cuckoo-clock on his night table.  He had overslept and only had forty-five minutes to get to the University and his eager psychology students.

            Professor Hisnibbs scrambled out of bed, shivering. Chilly fingers of air grabbed the exposed patches of his skin…a shocking reminder of the season and England’s damp.  He would not bother to wash before getting dressed for class. He was too much in a hurry, and time was of the essence.  

“Gosh darn it, when I was a boy, that’s how it was; a bath once a week if I were lucky, and being the eldest, I had to wait till all my six younger brothers and sisters had their bath.  By then the water in the metal tub was a muddy color.  Bah!  That’s how it should be today; one proper bath a week.  One should be sensible if one wants to pay less on electricity bills.  Conserve, preserve, and reserve.  Now what was that dream about?”  He sniffed his armpits.  “A bit pongy! Should keep the lady flies at bay.”

From a pile of yesterday’s washing, he hauled out a pair of navy blue no-name underpants.  In the back of his mind, he could hear his mother’s voice scolding him about the benefits of clean underwear especially if he should have an accident.  Hobbling on the foot that was already through one opening of the underpants, the other foot hovered over the other, he eyed the pile of unfolded laundry, guilt tugging at his heartstrings. It was times like this he appreciated the benefits of a wife—if only he had bothered to acquire one.  He combed his bony fingers through his head of curls.

            Visualize a mop head and a broom handle, and one would have an exact likeness in the person of Charles Henry Hisnibbs, for he still had a full head of hair, now white with age.  At six foot two, he was lanky.  But right now, much was happening in his brain and it made his green eyes dart about like jumping catfish.  Today he was anxious to get to his class because his dream had provided him with a new angle on why we dream what we dream.

All sixteen students were in class by the time Professor Hisnibbs bounced into the classroom. Plopping his battered black leather briefcase and a pile of dog-eared books onto his desktop, he wasted no time with morning salutations, but raised his first question.

“Can you actually prove that when you’re awake you’re not actually asleep, and when you’re asleep you’re not actually awake?”

             The class of budding psychologists groaned and shuffled in their seats, surprised that the professor sought an answer to such an obvious well-worn question. 

            “Well . . .!” said Hisnibbs, planting his knuckles into the sides of his puny waist.  “Don’t all of you answer at the same time, now, okay?”

           Tom Hendricks shoved his hand up lazily, beating Karl and Hamish by a full minute because they had to pluck theirs from under the armpits of their wool jerseys.

           “I think, therefore I am . . . Freud, Prof.  Everybody knows that,” said Hamish with a yawn, before Tom could calm his chatter teeth enough to speak.

            “Ah ha!” bellowed Professor Hisnibbs, punctuating the air with his index finger.  “I knew one of you so called-geniuses would say that.  Yes, that’s true according to… Freud, did you say Hamish? Huum, I don’t think it was.  Anyway, that aside, what if I should say that I have discovered something more meaningful than the ‘I think therefore I am theory?’ What if I were to say that when you dream, your spirit self actually leaves your human body and wanders back to some other dimension of its choosing?” 

            “Like the subconscious? Everyone knows that dreams expel rubbish from your subconscious mind.” Said Hamish, the corner of his mouth curled into a smirk.  His psychology professor was nothing but a British nutcase.  He thought about the movie that he had watched the previous night: the Madness of King George.  There were some similarities.

          “No, Hamish,” said the Professor, agitated.  “Like really going to another world, to someplace where the spirit-self recognize people and places from its past; have past memories; able to do things…that sort of thing.”

           “Hogwash,” grumbled Karl, picking something out of his teeth; his fingers reeking of stale sweat.

           “The spirit experiences pain, emotions, and has memories of its own,” continued Professor Hisnibbs.  “I can prove it.”

           “How’s that, Prof?” asked Tom, slouching back in his seat.

           Hisnibbs cleared his throat rather loudly, glad for the opportunity to present his dream.  “In one of my dreams last night, I had the misfortune of choking on a piece of bread, while at dinner with my dream companions.  I started coughing and hacking when I tried to dislodge the object.  Within seconds, I awoke, coughing and spluttering as if I had actually choked on the confounded thing for real.  My chest ached, my nose ran and my eyes watered.  What do you think of that?”

          “Spit, Prof.,” said Karl.  “You choked on your own spit.  Simple.”

          “Where did your nose run to?” muttered Hamish under his breath.  “Siberia? Or Planet Looney Bin?”

          “For heaven sakes, lads, open your eyes and your mind.  Use the gray matter given to you, Karl.  Expand your mind instead of hanging on every word printed in your perishing textbooks.  I tell you, dreams tell us something about ourselves,” expounded the professor.  “Dreams remind us of our spirit’s previous existence.  Can’t you see that?”

           For a few minutes, the class remained silent.  Except for Professor Hisnibbs’s darting eyeballs and heaving chest, no one moved.

           “What you have is a hypothesis, Prof.,” said Karl, breaking the silence and stifling his giggles.  “The Bible makes no mention of previous lives, sir.”

          “A hypothesis yes, But . . .” Professor Hisnibbs paused, his beady, glassy eyes bored through his wire-rimmed glasses.  The boys shifted impatiently in their seats, wishing the professor would get on with his hair-brained reasoning or drop it altogether.

          “But, if it were possible for one of you to experience an unpleasant emotion or even a pleasant one from the dream dimension, might you then accept my hypothesis as a proven theory?”

          No longer able to contain themselves, the boys burst out laughing.

          “Come on, Prof, you know that ain’t possible now, don’t ya?” drawled Sandy Kirkland, the only South American in the psychology class.  “I ain’t any way near as deductive as Tom or them other two, but I know what you said just ain’t possible. Know what I’m saying? You can’t manipulate the mind to dream what you tell it.  Ain’t no way, man.”

 “I gotta agree with Kirkland there, Professor,” said Tom. “No one, not even you can do that.”

 Tom was convinced that the Professor was a lunatic.  Last week he expected them to believe that a train doesn’t leave the station, but rather the station leaves the train.  The week before it was that water in toilet bowls in the North and South hemisphere swirled in opposite directions because of the opposite gravitation pull. Now this!

           “Say, Kirkland, how would you like to try this experiment in my office?” said Hisnibbs, scratching his scraggly beard.

          “Me, Professor?” said Kirkland, slouching in his chair.  Now he wished he had kept his gob shut and let the three geniuses argue their case with the Professor.

          “Why not a doubting Thomas, like yourself, eh?” challenged the professor.

            “Why not Tom?  He don’t believe this dream world thing either,” defended Kirkland.

           A roar broke out from Tom, Karl and Hamish.  “Raw, raw, go for it Kirk-land, go for it.”

           Soon the rest of the class joined in the chorus.  Suddenly nervous, Kirkland felt his face grow hot, sweat beaded across his brow and upper lip.  There was an unexpected rumble in his tummy and he did what anyone would have done in a crunch.  He released the pent-up gas (baked bean and eggs was not a good breakfast idea). At that instant, the roar of encouragement turned to snorts and muffled groans as the class quickly covered their noses.  The boys were shouting to each other:

          “The fan …”

          “Open the windows …”

          “Get the door …”

          “Air purification needed…”

           Pandemonium broke out in the Psychology class.  Bodies raced in all directions, flinging doors and prying windows open.  Professor Hisnibbs watched the pandemonium with interest. “Kirkland…my office…after class…no, make that 8p.m. tonight,” said Professor Hisnibbs.  “The rest of you doubting Thomas’s if you’re interested in my experiment, you know the time and place.”

           All sixteen students arrived at the Professor’s office at the appointed time.  Anticipating that, out of curiosity, the entire class would show up, the professor had arranged fifteen chairs in a semicircle.  He had procured a cot, pillow, and blanket from the nearby nurse’s teaching college.  These he placed in the space between the front of his desk and the first row of chairs.  Beside the cot, he placed a single chair.  They closed the wooden Venetian blinds and pulled the heavy thermal drapes across the windows.  Only one central incandescent light glowed from a lamp on his desk, just enough to push the looming darkness into the corners. 

             Kirkland shivered at the gloomy ambience and tried to ease out of the experiment, but the others hooted and booed, accusing him of being a coward. 

           “Just how are you supposed to do this thing, Prof?” asked Kirkland, gaping at the cot.  “It’s not going to be like a séance or anything weird, is it?”

           “Boy,” replied Professor, “we’re not intending to speak to the dead. That would be preposterous and certainly against the teachings of Scripture.” Hisnibbs shook his head.    “I plan to use tea.”

          “Tea?.  You’re gonna give me tea? I don’t drink tea, Prof,” said Kirkland, walking towards the door.

           “But it’s only Sleepy-time tea...I use it every night,” replied Hisnibbs.

            “I never imagined you Americans as chickens,” mocked Karl, flapping his arms.

           “Me neither,” Hamish joined in.

           Kirkland conceded.

           Professor Hisnibbs settled Kirkland onto the cot and covered him with the blanket, which smelt faintly of medicine.  From his pocket he plucked a small flask and a sealed tea bag.  Shucks! It isn’t Sleepy-time tea! It’s iced tea mix! Never mind, tea is tea. The experiment must go on. Reaching for his mug on the desk, he poured hot water from the flask into it.

           “Let me smell that,” said Kirkland, reaching for the cup. Several loud sniffs confirmed that the liquid could only be water.  He handed the cup back to the professor.

           After pouring the iced tea mix into the cup and swirling it, Professor Hisnibbs was ready. He handed the cup to Kirkland.

          “Down the hatch, lad.”

          “Yeah!” said Kirkland, gulping down the strong mixture and screwing up his face.  “Now what?” he asked handing the cup to the professor.

          “You sleep…and dream,” said the professor.

           Kirkland rolled his eyes pretending to be sleepy.

           Pulling the chair closer with the toe of his shoe, Professor Hisnibbs plopped his bottom onto it. 

          Kirkland looked at the clock on the wall behind the professor’s head.  What he was feeling was not the effects of the tea; it was nearing his bedtime.  He blinked several times but couldn’t suppress a yawn.

           “That’s it, lad. That’s it.  Don’t fight it,” coaxed Hisnibbs, wishing he could remember the words of the childhood song his mother sang to his little sister. “Close your eyes and sleepy-byes, when you awake you will get ice-cream and chocolate…”

            If the Professor had a singing voice, Kirkland wouldn’t mind listening all night, but he didn’t.  It was up to him to shut him up.  Still aware of his surroundings, Kirkland allowed his eyelids to droop.  He would pretend he was at home in bed and he would block out the professor’s annoying, scratchy voice. 

            As Kirkland’s head plopped sideways, the professor bellowed:  “At last!”

           The rest of the boys sucked in their breaths, but Professor Hisnibbs waved his hand to silence then.  After ten minutes he said in a soft voice, “Are you dreaming yet, Kirkland?”

           No response!

           Kirkland was indeed fast asleep; his breathing was soft but steady.  His chest lifted gently with every breath, but his face remained calm. 

           Suddenly Kirkland stirred.  His eyeballs moved rapidly beneath his eyelids, and he became increasingly agitated.  His breathing was raspy now and his arms shot out, wildly stoking as if swimming the front crawl in a desperate effort to finish first.

            “Kirkland,” shouted Professor Hisnibbs, “The tea must have been too strong. You must awake now.”

             Suddenly, Kirkland began to cough, a deep chesty cough, as if he was suffering from a chest cold.  His eyes flew open, his breathing loud. He struggled to sit up.  Water spewed from his mouth and tears flowed from his eyes. 

When at last the coughing subsided, Professor Hisnibbs said: “What happened, lad?  What frightened you?”

            Kirkland shook his head.  “I…I was asleep, wasn’t I?” he paused.  He could still taste the chlorine. This was not a good time to admit he couldn’t swim.  But what else could he do?  He almost drowned in the dream he was having. The water he swallowed caused him to cough and splutter.  Perhaps the professor’s theory about dreams was right.  Perhaps the spirit did travel to another dimension. Hamish was in my dream. It was he who pushed me into the pool.

           “Well?” prompted Professor Hisnibbs when Kirkland offered no further explanation.

           “Don’t hold out on us now, Kirky,” said Hamish, stunned by what he had witnessed.  “What gives, man?”

           Kirkland rubbed his chest. It felt sore from swallowing chlorinated water.  “I almost drowned,” said Kirkland simply.  “I can’t swim.”

           “What do you mean ‘you can’t swim’?” asked Hamish.

           “The dream, man.  I fell into a swimming pool . . . the deep end.  I didn’t want to die.  Not like that.  I struggled to bring myself to the surface.  My lungs filled up with water and I was spluttering and coughing when I finally broke through to the surface.  That was for real, man…for real!” He looked at Hamish, but made no mention of him being in the dream and at the pool.

           “Blimey,” echoed several voices.

          “Just as I thought,” said Professor Hisnibbs, slapping the side of his leg. 

           “And it wasn’t the iced tea which triggered my dream, either, Prof.  I simply fell asleep because it was my normal bedtime.”

           Hisnibbs cleared his throat. “Boys,” he said, scrambling to his feet and knocking his chair over with the back of his legs.  “This is only the beginning…the tip of the iceberg, as it were.”

          The professor scurried around like a rabid squirrel.  “Recordings!  We must begin recording our dreams each night.  Yes, yes, yes.  Records!  We must keep records, all of us.  We’re on to something big.  Something bigger than anything Freud could ever have anticipated.”

          The boys looked at each other as the professor rambled on.  They had seen the evidence and felt convinced that their professor was on to something big.  Tom, though, still had some doubts, but he would keep his reservations to himself, for now.

          Kirkland, on the other hand, was deep in thought:  Perhaps that’s the reason why I don’t like Hamish.  I didn’t like him in my dream and I don’t like him now.  Maybe God was sending him a warning. Geez!  This is incredible!  When he looked at Hamish again, the Irishman was glaring back at him, a half-smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

            The Professor’s voice broke into Kirkland’s troubled thoughts:  “I wouldn’t be surprised that certain dreams, or rather certain elements in dreams serve to tell us something.”

           “Like what, Prof?” asked Kirkland, dragging his eyes from Hamish.

           “Could be that some higher power is trying to communicate with us, trying to alert us to impending danger, that sort of thing,” replied Hisnibbs.

           You got that right, Prof, thought Kirkland, not ready to voice his agreement.

           “You mean like God’s trying to warn us?” asked Tom, with renewed interest.  “Why bring Him into this?”

           “Because He controls the universe, you and me, don’t you see?” replied Hisnibbs.

           “Like He has nothing else to do but sit there orchestrating the dreams of billions of people?  Yeah, right!” mocked Hamish.

           But Professor Hisnibbs had no interest in starting another argument.  He must remain focused on the quest to prove his theory.  So, ignoring Hamish, he said:  “We’re each going to record every single detail of our dreams as soon as we awake, even if we’re startled out of slumber in the middle of the night.  We’ll take time to analyze our dreams. Hamish if you chose to, you don’t have to participate.”

           “You can count me in, Prof.,” said Hamish, reluctant to admit he was more than curious, now.  “I don’t want to miss any of this even if I still have some doubts.” 

          At this, Kirkland groaned. He felt strongly now that his dream about Hamish was a warning for him to be vigilant the next time he volunteered to referee the water polo match between Hamish’s team and Tom’s.  Again he glanced at Hamish and found him glaring back with the same haunting, vindictive expression as in the dream.

        “By the way, Hamish,” said Professor Hisnibbs, “it was Descartes who said: ‘Cogito Ergo Sum – I think therefore I am’.  According to him, his clear consciousness of thinking proved his own existence. Goodnight, fellas.”

         Kirkland and the professor were the last to leave.

        “You didn’t just happen to fall into the pool, did you, Kirkland?” whispered Professor Hisnibbs, with a knowing smile.