Friday, May 17, 2013

Alma? Betty? What the…??

"Dreamland" Where the men are men and the women are after 'em

"I Like Dreamin" was an exceptionally awful hit record for Kenny Nolan in the late 1970's.  Maybe it was dreadful but, at least to my mind, old Kenny espoused a great philosophy.  I really DO like dreaming and indulge myself as the star of nightly double and triple features nearly every time I close my eyes.  Ever since childhood my dreams have been vivid, memorable and in color.  I'm told that this is rare--the color and memorable part.
Statistically most folks don't remember their dreams and the majority of sleepers claim to only have black & white dreamland receivers.  I find that hard to believe.

Dream analysis is entertaining if you have the ability to recall your nightly sojourns.  My experience is that almost all of my dreams reflect ambivalence about whatever wakeful problems or personal dilemmas I'm currently having.  An elevator that keeps opening and closing as I search for someone, also the inability to speak or make myself heard is almost always prevalent in dreams regarding my personal relationships.  Dreams involving a return to booze and smokes usually are prompted by rage about something or someone.  (Having employed the services of Dr. Jack Daniels as my primary physician for more than thirty years probably explains this.)  Sleep with recurring episodes of running and being naked most always pertains to impending changes and job uncertainty.  

I've noticed a tendency toward running and fearful dreams when I'm staying in a strange new place.  No PHD is needed to get the drift of that one.  As a further indication of my slide into geezerdom, whipped cream and deserts visit my dreams more frequently than whoopee.  I presume that is par for the grandpa course.

The most common dream for all of us is the one where you are about to graduate from high school or college and have just discovered you forgot to attend or do the course work for a required class.  I still have that one in spite of not having darkened a classroom door in more than forty years.

Often when swapping radio lies with other broadcast veterans I find that a dream common to all of us is the recurring nightmare of being on the air and locked out of the studio as a record or commercial is ending.  You beat on the door and try to break the studio window glass but to no avail.  A cold sweat wake up follows that one.

The reason for this demented blog on dreamland is as follows:  Two nights ago,  for the first time EVER, I had a dream so BORING it woke me up!  This was so bad I actually had to get up for awhile and shake this incredibly mundane dream.  The worst part of it is I can think of absolutely nothing that would have instigated this nighttime ticket to dullsville.  Here is the gist of the episode:  Several years ago in Seattle and San Diego I worked with two different radio traffic directors.  Radio traffic directors are the people charged with scheduling commercials that run on the various shows a station broadcasts.  It is a rather dull job usually held by older matrons who treat the air personalities like their own children.  "Ken, you were supposed to play that American Airlines spot at 6:51 am, not 6:53!"  "The client wants a "make good" because he said that someone--YOU--made a farting sound when he claimed to have the lowest prices in town."  Etc etc etc.  In Seattle the traffic director was a black woman named Alma and in San Diego a white older lady, an Arkansas native, was the boss of traffic.  Her name was Betty.  Neither disliked me and, for the most part, I avoided getting into trouble with them.  That is what makes having this dream so peculiar.   It went like this:   I dreamed I was on the air and, for some reason, both of them called me on the station hot line to ask me to move some commercials around on the program log. Zzzzzzzzzz…oops, sorry.  I told you it was boring. The dream was interminable!  It kept going on and on with me moving commercials and them telling me to hang on they had more changes for me.  I finally bored myself into consciousness.  I have often wakened screaming, sweating, breathing hard, thirsty, hungry and YES horny but NEVER BORED.  What the hell is that about?!  I get tired just thinking about it and never ever want a repeat.

Tonight Alma and Betty had better not call me because I WON'T ANSWER.  Perhaps a big piece of cheesecake and a gander at some of the babes in my old high school yearbook will plow some fun furrows in my cerebellum.  I remember the time at the drive in movie when my pals and I spiked the girls Cokes with….ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

Yeah, that's better.  Goodnight!

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