How Could I Forget?

Do people remember the first dream... they remember? Sometimes when I'm trying to get to know people I ask them what their first memory is. More often than not, they don't want to answer the question because it involves a lot of thinking and they reply, "I don't remember." Unfortunately their whole lack of wanting to think puts me in the wonderful position of being able to ask, "you don't remember your first memory?" They feel stupid, I make a bad first impression and my existence as a reclusive writer type is further cemented. I don't really ask people what the first dream they remember is, because they will always answer "they don't remember." I've lost too many friends over this.

Recalling your first memorable dream can be tricky. Granted, you will probably remember your most traumatic dreams, but I would be very saddened to find that everyone's first dream is a night terror. Personally, I don't recall my parents having to explain to me what a dream was. They seem to be part of the realm of understood phenomena. I never asked why I ate, I only knew what hunger felt like and that eating felt good when I felt hunger. I never asked what the sun was. It was always the thing that meant day, and people called it the sun. I hope, if I have kids, I don't have to explain what a dream is. I hope when they have their first vivid dream, they don't ask me about mine.

The first dream I remember having was when I was three years old. I lived in Orangevalle, California. In the dream, two burglars, who in my mind have been supplanted by the actors from Home Alone, break into my house. The dream starts with me waking up from a nap. I wander into the kitchen and find them cooking my mother's severed head in a skillet of frothing oil. They tell me to eat it.

I didn't wake up screaming or crying as you might expect. I woke up from a nap, and wandered into the kitchen, where my mom was cooking dinner. On the refrigerator hung a paper cutout of Bert and Ernie. My mother was frying something in a pan. Content with seeing her head where it should be, I let it go.

A few days ago, a man on the radio said that people recall relatively few dreams over the course of their lifetimes. The number he said seemed astronomically low. I remember a lot of them. I forget even more. When I was growing up, I would have dream conversations with people, and then forget what I had talked to them about in reality and what had occurred in a dream. Some dreams were completely mundane. Those were some of the worst. Dreams where you just get up, go the school, or go to work, and that's it. You wake up, get up and go to school or work. In many respects those are worst than nightmares. A nightmare is still an escape from taxes and news media.