THE BORN LESAR

Now just why would I dream about my own death?

My dictionary says a dream is 'a sequence of sensations, images, thoughts, etc. passing through a sleeping person's mind.' I'm good with that, except I think the entry on page 434 of my Webster's New World-4th Edition could add 'likely associated with the person's deep-seated irrational fears and anxieties caused by repressed childhood memories of power-wedgies administered by school bus bullies.'

Yeah, I know, that is kinda specific for a dictionary entry. Might need some adjusting. Like my undies did after the wedgies.

But, regardless of their cause, dreams are a powerful subconscious reminder of either one of two things: 1.) The human mind never rests even when the body is asleep, or 2.) We're all nuts. Nobody, I suspect, is immune from dreaming -- whether it be awful nightmares or peaceful mental meanderings -- and what causes them is probably as unknowable as the reason why Nancy Pelosi walks likes she has needles in her shoes. Just watch her sometime. Looks painful.

Speaking of pain and dreams -- which is what I was about to get around to -- there was an evening last week when I snoozed while watching the NBC Nightly News (c'mon, Lester Holt, liven it up, you're losin' me) and when I regained consciousness, well, I just couldn't clear the cobwebs. At like 8 p.m. or so, a full four hours before I usually turn in, I just said to heck with it, I'm done. I'm checkin' out. Turn out the lights. Enough already. See ya' tomorrow.

You get the picture.

I fell asleep fairly normally and logged a good four hours of deepish slumber, but woke up suddenly at 1:23 a.m. in a state of some fright. I had dreamed, see, of my own earthly demise, witnessed it first hand, matter of fact, and had to sit up in bed to make sure I was still of conscious mind and functioning body. Yep, had to pee. That verified it.

My dream was this. Me and some friends were playing in a softball tournament -- something we did often in my pre-excess belly fat days -- and we were camping near the field. To get to our upcoming game, two of my buddies hopped on one motorcycle and sped off, and I grabbed the other one and followed.

Mind you, now, to get to our destination, we had to cross a long, harvested corn field, with just the stalk stubble remaining. My friends were gaining ground on me, and in my quest to catch up, I twisted the throttle to wide open.

This is where the dream gets peculiar, as not only am I as afraid of motorcycles as I am of big, fat snakes ( I think I was swallowed by an anaconda in a past life), I surely would never in real life drive one beyond crawling speed. Yet, here I am, racing across a dry, dusty cornfield, until ...

That's when it happened. In my dream, I am not on the bike, but trailing the scene, as a witness. I see my motorcycle weave and wobble and then crash violently in a cloud of debris, coming to rest as a crowd of people runs to the scene. I run up, too, and as I look at the mangled wreck to see how I fared, a man points some 20 yards ahead, and says 'Up there.' I look then, at a trail of blood across the corn stubble and follow it to my mutilated self. I just hate it when that happens.

As I stand there, I realize I'm gone from this life, and nobody can sense I'm there. As the crowd mumbles and buzzes, I start to lift from the ground, slowly floating upward into the summer sky. Just to see if I can, I do a midair somersault. I mean, who wouldn't, right?

I'm now at drone height, watching down as people gather around my remains. My friends turn around and return as I slowly float off into the distance. I pass over a grove of trees and realize that I don't know where I'm supposed to go, or what I'm supposed to do from here on out, until, say, maybe, the end of eternity. Is this it, I think. Is this all there is? No pearly gates, or fiery entrance to the netherworld?

As dreams will do, this one fast-forwards back to the campsite, where some of my friends are now returning. I have come back, too, but am hiding out in some tall grass, you know, probably after realizing that I'm kind of scared of heights, too, and all that floating around was making my tummy spin. Eventually, I decide it would be best if I just came out of the grass and walked right among everybody, pretending that nothing has happened at all.

To my surprise, they see me now, and say, 'Oh, there you are' as they all look puzzled that I'm really not dead. Some are relieved, others take it rather matter-of-factly. I guess you find out who your friends really are when you subconsciously crash and burn. It was an unnerving dream, sure. My nighttime mental wanderings are usually not so dire, and only in one other instance did I conjure my own impending doom. My dreams are usually more of the a-college-exam-is-coming-and-Ihaven't- studied variety, or maybe a scene where something dangerous is chasing me but my legs refuse to run. You know, common stuff. We all have 'em. You wake up, think to yourself, 'Cripes, what the heck was that all about?' and then fall back to sleep within 10 minutes. Or maybe an hour, if you remember you have some leftover fried chicken in the fridge.

I've read books and talked to a lot of people of what dreams may mean, but nobody seems to have a good handle on it. What, for example, causes a person one night to dream about her or his own death, while the next night you fall asleep and your mind puts you in some serene scene filled with flowers and puppies? Are dreams triggered by something that happened to you that day, or by a festering pool of subconscious worries and fears that just happen to boil over one night?

I'm going to try to learn something from my nightmare the other night. The moral I'm taking from that story is, if you go to bed early and don't inhale your usual half bag of Doritos, you're probably gonna die. Just don't think I'm willing to take that chance again.