Benny & Sid presents Chapter 3 of the serialized graphic novel The Truant Officer

(Your City, USA) - You never dream the dream that dreamers are supposed to dream. You never find yourself skipping in fields of brightly colored flowers.

Faces which should be friendly and familiar are foreign and blurred. You're late for class, or you can't remember your lines in the play you find yourself in and performing before hundreds of people.

What's the combination for that lock which keeps you from washing your gym clothes? Maybe you find yourself still married to you ex- and she's still nagging you. Dreams are Hell. Let's call them nighmares, although these lack the melodrama of being chased by demons.

When your waking hours are no better than your dreams you know you're in trouble. You bite your lip and choke back a cry of desperation.

There's always the weekend, you tell yourself. There are always those free moments when you can reach back into your memories and find a safehouse. Some recollection of good times. Friends, family.

A special someone. You lock onto that thought and you overlay your day with it as best you can. It's just a technique, but it works. It gets you by until the clouds break again and you can take the day in as it really is.

You have to wonder if Truant Officers -- or Hand Sanitizers, for that matter -- ever have it that good. Or do they forever reach for any good moment in memory like a drowning man gasps for air?

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Glen October 9, 2009 7:17 am (Pacific time)

An acquaintance once told me that when she dreamed she was aware of being in a dream. But however hard she tried to wake up, she couldn't. My reply was Oliver Hardy-like in his know-it-all character. "Whenever I'm dreaming and I want to wake up, all I have to do is open my eyes." If I'd worn a necktie I probably would have fussed with it as Ollie did. Unfortunately that simple statement triggered a series of dreams four years long (all during college) of dreaming, being aware that I was dreaming, but being unable to wake up. Dreaming and "waking" into yet another dream was common. The worst episode was when I set the alarm to wake me to go work in the dorm cafeteria. I slept and was aware that I was dreaming but felt confident that the alarm would wake me. After a while I heard the alarm but didn't wake. I threw myself off the bed and still wouldn't wake. Some time later I really woke up and found that the alarm hadn't gone off and I was still on the bed. The alarm going off had just been part of series of dreams within a dream. While these episodes might sound like the result of someone indulging into psychedelic drugs, I've never taken any drug which wasn't prescribed by a doctor, and in those days I wouldn't even take an aspirin. The moral is don't take dreams too lightly. Sleep takes up a third of our lives yet we know next to nothing about what they are and when sleep doesn't easily come or the dreamer is haunted by disturbing dreams we are relatively helpless to do anything about it.

Daniel Johnson October 7, 2009 4:59 pm (Pacific time)

Speaking of dreams, I had a really strange one last night. I dreamt I was asleep and, when I woke up, I was.

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