No, I haven't!

October 19, 2012 6:23 AM

Have you ever had a dream like this? {22 second Youtube clip}
posted by dobbs (53 comments total)

"...you want him to do you so much you could do anything?"

Yes. I really hope this kid hasn't though.
posted by yellowbinder at 6:27 AM on October 19, 2012 [5 favorites]

Why am I the only person who has that dream?
posted by infinitewindow at 6:29 AM on October 19, 2012 [6 favorites]

No but I have a dream like this every night.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:38 AM on October 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

Yes. Yes, I have.
posted by kinnakeet at 6:38 AM on October 19, 2012

I sometimes wish I remembered my dreams. And then I talk to other people.
posted by ZaneJ. at 6:41 AM on October 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Our son has started telling us about his dreams. He's two, so his personal mythology is stocked with the characters we expect - stuff we let him watch on TV (Thomas the Tank Engine, Fireman Sam, Big Bird, etc), characters from his books (Curious George, Rob and Rob from Little Tykes..), and his toys (panda, police car, fire engine, the rabbits).

This made the introduction of a new character, Robot Man, puzzling. He has no robot toys. There are robots on his snack lunchbox. We sometimes play robot by putting buckets on our heads while making beeping noises, but I don't think he knows what a robot is.

According to his dreams, Robot Man comes into his room at night and says 'hi' to him. We finally figured out who Robot Man was when we passed by a street performer wearing a blue jumpsuit and wearing a plain white mask. Our son saw him and pointed out Robot Man, then got very, very scared. 'I don't like Robot Man,' he said, 'He shouldn't be here.' The poor mime tried to wave at our son, but he just hid behind me and begged to go home.

Robot Man sightings are on the rise now, even during his waking hours, with no mimes in sight. 'Robot Man is outside. He wants to come in.' 'Robot Man misses his Mommy.' 'Robot Man is sad.' Robot Man still visits him at night, but the visits are not as cheery as they once were. 'Go away, Robot Man!'

When my son dreams in the dark, I wonder what he sees - a blank white face with coal black eyes, lost and lonely, staring at him in the darkness. Does it reach for him? Does it whisper?

What does it say?
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:43 AM on October 19, 2012 [31 favorites]

What does it say?

"I'm . . . bleeding."
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:45 AM on October 19, 2012 [30 favorites]

If you're interested, I'm pretty sure this is from a lovely HBO special called "Goodnight Moon and Other Sleepytime Tales," which you can watch here. The Lauryn Hill version of "Hush Little Baby" is magnificent.
posted by jbickers at 6:49 AM on October 19, 2012

Yes, I think this is an outtake from that HBO dvd.
posted by carter at 6:52 AM on October 19, 2012

Adawable.
posted by scratch at 6:55 AM on October 19, 2012

I distinctly remember the first dream I remember: the Grimace. Running toward me. On a white background.

It was terrifying.
posted by ook at 6:58 AM on October 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

More like this.
posted by liquidindian at 7:02 AM on October 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

What does it say?

Oil.........................can.

Oil can what?
posted by kuanes at 7:05 AM on October 19, 2012

When I was very young, I had my tonsils removed. I was given gas to put me under, at which time I had a vivid dream that featured my dad and Fred Flintstone fighting each other with rayguns.
posted by davebush at 7:08 AM on October 19, 2012 [3 favorites]

It's in dolby stereo but I never hear it right.
posted by adamt at 7:08 AM on October 19, 2012

Do you dream of this man?
posted by Phreesh at 7:12 AM on October 19, 2012 [3 favorites]

robocop is bleeding: maybe he's just following your MeFi postings and Robot Man is you.
posted by stopgap at 7:14 AM on October 19, 2012

Do you dream of this man?

So everybody's dreaming of bald Mr. Bean?

cool website!
posted by Tarumba at 7:25 AM on October 19, 2012

That kid grew up!
posted by kimota at 7:30 AM on October 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

Do you dream of this man?

So everybody's dreaming of bald Mr. Bean?

I like them french fried pertaters, mmmm hmmmm.
posted by humboldt32 at 7:36 AM on October 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

I have to be grateful that I don't really remember my dreams from that age. Your first serious nightmare must be just insanely terrifying as hell.
posted by mhoye at 7:39 AM on October 19, 2012

When I was 2 or 3 I suffered chronic nightmares for a year of being pecked on my back by a large bird.

A quarter of a century later my older brother and I are having a beer and he started to tell me a story about the time when I was very young and I had to go to the hospital to have an infection lanced on my back and he was given a HUGE lollipop and left in the waiting room with a stack of comics.

Fucker.
posted by MuffinMan at 7:43 AM on October 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

"...you want him to do you so much you could do anything?"

Little kid saying something insane and perverse. Must be from Wonder Showzen.
posted by dgaicun at 8:01 AM on October 19, 2012

I have a vivid memory of a dream I had when I was very young of Count Chocula stealing our dog.
posted by Windigo at 8:04 AM on October 19, 2012

...AND I DIDN'T EVEN EAT THAT CEREAL. I wasn't allowed because chocolate was NOT a breakfast flavor in my home.
posted by Windigo at 8:05 AM on October 19, 2012

I know that feels Windigo, I had a dream that the Hamburglar came to steal my fruit roll-ups. SCARRED.
posted by yellowbinder at 8:08 AM on October 19, 2012

Count Chocula stealing our dog

Cereal dog napper?
posted by davebush at 8:14 AM on October 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

I have a vivid memory of a dream I had when I was very young of Count Chocula stealing our dog.

This is somehow extremely touching, Windigo.

I wonder whether your parents told you chocolate was very bad for dogs and might make your dog go away forever if you were to feed him or her any.
posted by jamjam at 8:37 AM on October 19, 2012

I have to be grateful that I don't really remember my dreams from that age. Your first serious nightmare must be just insanely terrifying as hell.

I had a nightmare in my toddlerhood about being lost and trapped in an endless funhouse.

I still remember it as the most scared I've been in my entire life.
posted by fatbird at 9:07 AM on October 19, 2012

I had two very memorable dreams as a kid. One was a one-off and the other recurring:
The one-off was incredibly weird, and scary at the time but now just ridiculous. In it, the Easter Bunny (read: someone in a very obvious E.B. costume) was reaching into my bedroom window trying to abduct me.
The recurring one, which was just flat-out terrifying, looked exactly like the old Atari game Keystone Kapers, except all red and with a countdown on the bottom of the screen. All I remember is that the countdown was to some inevitable apocalypse (I think nuclear). It was a bit much for my 4-year old dome.
posted by staccato signals of constant information at 9:12 AM on October 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

When I was about nine I had a very vivid dream which I can still recall in some detail. The world had been taken over by giant, just-larger-than-human-sized butterflies. Since butterflies dislike rain, they were planning to cover the Earth's entire surface with a series of clear plastic climate-controlled domes. I realised that the butterflies had not taken into account the effect this would have on the Earth's ecosystem and that they would soon suffer from the death of almost all plantlife. It was my mission to find the leader of these butterflies and explain the flaw in the plan!

I am still hoping to sell this concept to the James Bond franchise. You heard it here first.
posted by Acheman at 9:18 AM on October 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

I should add that since the human population was enslaved my mission was quite arduous.
posted by Acheman at 9:19 AM on October 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

What does it say?

"I want more life futhker"?
posted by howfar at 10:25 AM on October 19, 2012

Anybody with kids has had innumerable conversations in this vein, as the brain attempts to push through concepts too sophisticated for the current language apparatus. Come on kid, you know how to say stuff, just start that sentence off and roll with it, you had- you c- you w- you wa- you could d-. I think he's trying to say have you ever had a dream where just by wanting to do something so much you could do anything, even something impossible? Sure thing pal. The worst is when after all that effort you have absolutely no clue what they were trying to spit out.
posted by nanojath at 11:14 AM on October 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

Robot Man sightings are on the rise now, even during his waking hours, with no mimes in sight. 'Robot Man is outside. He wants to come in.' 'Robot Man misses his Mommy.' 'Robot Man is sad.' Robot Man still visits him at night, but the visits are not as cheery as they once were. 'Go away, Robot Man!'

NOPENOPENOPENOPENOPE. This is frightfully close to some things I had issues with when I was small. Bad things coming back.
posted by Krazor at 11:37 AM on October 19, 2012

All I see is the first glimmers of ego; that nasty parasite that enslaves us.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 11:46 AM on October 19, 2012

It's not a vir-us, it's a vir-me.
posted by MuffinMan at 1:40 PM on October 19, 2012

There are many 10's on meta.
posted by lumpenprole at 1:58 PM on October 19, 2012

Like robocop is bleeding my toddler's dream reports can be mystifying and parental terror inducing. My son's recent report of "the hot wind that comes at night" was the creepiest thing that I had ever heard another human being utter.
posted by Dr. Twist at 2:23 PM on October 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

I asked my son about Robot Man tonight and learned the following: He eats bananas with his friend, a skeleton. The skeleton does not come inside - he has to wait in the street and look at the house.

The situation is not improving.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 3:18 PM on October 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

Probably should remind your son that it's actually pronounced "skellington".
posted by howfar at 3:36 PM on October 19, 2012

liquidindian: "More like this."

At first I'm like - yeah yeah, we know what's coming, and as it keeps going I can't help but not laugh. That is some funny shit.
posted by symbioid at 3:52 PM on October 19, 2012

Oh, man. The scariest recurring nightmare of my youth, the one that scared me as much when I was sixteen as it did when I was four, was a black horizon line against a filthy white field. The white space barely had any perspective to it: It was like a white wall with a black line drawn on it, but it was also like a vast white ground and sky. The color was like that shitty industrial white tile that was never really white, but there's no good simple name for it.
The Black Thing was both as far away as the horizon and SO CLOSE that you can still see it when you shut your eyes and I never knew how big it was or how far away, but it was complex, and fuzzy spiky noisy.

When I read The Great and Secret Show, I was struck by the description of the Iad Ouroboros, for I couldn't figure how Clive Barker had seen the Black Thing from my nightmares.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 4:48 PM on October 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Robot Man sightings are on the rise now, even during his waking hours

Whatever you do, don't get him started on the Slender Man mythos.
posted by hippybear at 5:15 PM on October 19, 2012

I was scared by a dream about Chip n' Dale flying around my room in the light fixture (one of those saucery flat ceiling lights) when I was 4 or so. I think it scared me because I kind of knew I was dreaming, and that it didn't make sense.

But let's talk about good dreams! Oh wait, most of mine are kind of naughty. Never mind :)
posted by emjaybee at 6:58 PM on October 19, 2012

staccato signals of constant information: "All I remember is that the countdown was to some inevitable apocalypse (I think nuclear)."

Haven't we all had a recurring nuclear apocalypse dream? Now that I think about it, it's been years since I had that. It was a pretty regular fixture for the first 12 or 13 years of my life. When I was 5 or 6, they ended with the flash of light and massive explosion, where before it was just something that was known, rather than something that "visibly" happened.

My dreams are much less interesting and much harder to remember these days.
posted by wierdo at 7:37 PM on October 19, 2012

Whatever you do, don't get him started on the Slender Man mythos.

Or let him see 1970s Children's BBC character Mr Noseybonk on YouTube.
posted by howfar at 7:44 PM on October 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'd be surprised if anyone under the age of 25 has had recurring nuclear apocalypse dreams. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Soviet Union was gone shortly thereafter...

There's an entire generation of voting-age people who never lived under the Soviet threat.
posted by hippybear at 7:46 PM on October 19, 2012

My first memory is a nightmare--I'm in my bedroom, and the monster from the end of this Sesame Street sketch is out in the hall, trying to get through my door.
posted by EarBucket at 8:04 PM on October 19, 2012

What, no dreams of little doors in the wall, which little gnome men might peek around (but only out of the corner of your eye, so you never actually see them, only the motion of them pulling their heads back behind the door)? And through which a person could be pulled by winds blowing from the attic?
posted by Chrischris at 8:12 PM on October 19, 2012

I've relayed this advice before, but will again: If you're dreaming about peeing, your brain is relaying a message, one which will be much soggier in a very short time if you don't pay heed.
posted by maxwelton at 9:26 PM on October 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

No, I haven't; but I did dream of endless, green rolling hills under a brilliant sky and and a crushing sense of dread and horror when I was a kid.

Years later I find the scene - almost identical - as the default wallpaper for Windows XP.
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 11:29 PM on October 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

If you're dreaming about peeing, your brain is relaying a message, one which will be much soggier in a very short time if you don't pay heed.
posted by maxwelton at 5:26 AM on October 20

But at least you can do what's needed once you've woken up. This is why I hate sex dreams.
posted by Decani at 1:59 AM on October 20, 2012