Very long convoluted dream

[fbhjr]

I dreamed I was at my parent’s house where I had grown up. I was in the basement looking for something and was having problems as the dog had left droppings all over the place.
I shouted upstairs that my brother should come down and deal with that as it was his dog and his responsibility.

I looked about and saw there was a young man down here dressed as some sort of jester/clown dancing about the basement.
"Are you a friend of my brother?" I asked.
"Oh, ho, ho, ho!" the man said in a way I took to imply he was.
"Tell him to get down here and clean up after his dog," I said and went back to searching.

As I searched around I head someone on the stairs and assume it was him. I suggested he start where the droppings were worst and kept looking.
I heard the back basement door open and looked to see why he was leaving without cleaning up. But, it wasn’t him, it was a woman all dressed in white like some sort of ice queen.

"Who are you?" I asked as she walked into the back yard. I followed and she walked over to a table with some controls on it at the edge of the woods. The controls were built on top of an old wooden stand my father had built when he used to do electrical experiments in the woods back in the 1960’s and 1970’s for the research papers he wrote. There were five sea gulls at the base of it.

"The controls let you make them dance," she said to me. "If you complete the dance steps shown for each, they get to go free. Sadly, they won’t survive you getting it wrong."
"I don’t want to make sea gulls dance," I said.
"Their lives depend on you," she said.
She switched on the panel and began to walk away. The first sea gull began to make sounds of being in pain.

I was very mad at her, but didn’t want the sea gulls to die, so I operated the controls. The dance steps were easy and they only had to do a small number before the controls fell off them and they flew away.

As I was getting the fourth bird through it, I saw a giant Raggedy Ann figure walking around in the drive way on the front side of the house. It looked like something from a festival parade or something.

"Hey! You wait there until I’m done with this!" I shouted across the yard to the front of the house. "I’m done with you people messing about!"

The figure seemed to hear me and turned and began walking away from my parent’s house and then down the road away.

I finished the last two sea gulls as fast as I could and then chased after them.

By the time I crossed the yard, got out to the road and started down it, I couldn’t specifically see the giant Raggedy Ann figure, but I did see a bunch of people folding up something big and putting it into a cart.
They looked at me and started pulling the cart away down the road as quick as they could.
At the base of the road where my parents live, they turned to the right and pulled their cart into the woods between streets.

I followed and came out the other side of the woods in time to see them pulling the cart into something that looked almost like a school dorm built on the street one over from where my parents live.

I went in after them and found myself in what looked like a costume party for university students. (I’d say it reminded me of the ones we used to have, but they were never this good…)
The costumes were all very ornate and looked professional. The young people wearing them were all talking about their "assignments".
Apparently one of the missions of this school was to try and bring "magic" back to the boring lives in suburbia. So, they would dress up as people and do strange things to try and shake things up in the neighborhood.
They picked on my parent’s house a lot because they thought they needed it.

I saw the bird woman and was headed her way to explain that none of this was a good reason to be cruel to birds, when I was stopped by someone.

"I know you," the young man said. "You work at that robot company. I was an intern there! You must be here looking for interns for next summer!"

Towards the edge of the room were some larger people who were clearly security. I realized I was now on the grounds of some sort of school and could be in a lot of trouble for trespassing and such.
"Sure," I said. "We’re always looking for creative talent."

I was then swarmed with university age people trying to tell me about their projects so they could get a summer job.
Their projects could all be construed as practical jokes on people who live in the area to try and get them to think more outside the box.
I explained I wasn’t interested in anyone who had broken laws like breaking into people’s homes, or done anything cruel to people or animals.
The jester guy and bird woman both heard this, looked sad and turned away.
I met the Raggedy Ann guy and agreed standing in a driveway in a big costume wasn’t the level of trespassing that really worried me.

After a while, someone came through a set of big double doors in one wall and announced that the lecture was going to start.
All of the students went through the door and I followed.

The inside looked more like a dance club that a lecture hall. People were standing around with drinks, there were colored lights playing across the room, there was music playing and everyone was talking.
The room had no chairs and was split into two sections. The back had a bar and was slightly raised with a banister around the level division. The rug was a red and gold think that reminded me of hotel ballrooms more than any lecture hall I’ve ever seen.
Along the back and left side wall was a big dark green dragon that stood out from the wall in three dimensions. It was very impressive and I walked over to look at it.

That turned out to be the subject of the lecture. The lights dimmed and one student was given a spot light to talk about how he made this children’s slide to look like a giant dragon. His trick was that with sound effects and motion built into it, it would really make kids think they were being eaten by a dragon.
He demonstrated by having some kids go in followed by roars and shaking of the dragon.
Some of the kids liked it, some did not.

When the lights came up the student who made it came up to me.
"What do you think?" he asked.
"It’s a very impressive job," I said. "But, I’m not sure it is a good think to scare your target audience quite so much."
He looked confused at this feedback.

Dream ends.


Believe it or not, I know where a lot of this dream comes from. I am very surprised at how my brain put it all together, but that’s a different story.

Yesterday we had dinner with my aunt. She talked about my mother, the house were I grew up, having pets and having friends you no longer see.
So, that explains a lot about the beginning setting. The path through the woods taken in the dream is the way I used to get to my friend Harry’s house growing up. The school was located in the dream about where his house was.
We even discussed a person I used to know who was mean to birds.

We also talked about getting older and what people to in order to try and keep their wits about them as they do.
The fact the experimental rig my father built for the experiments he did when he was about 60 show up in the dream fits right in with that.

We also talked about an engineer where I work that is causing problems because he is a jerk. He’s smart enough. He’s skilled enough. Everyone is coming to hate him as he says insulting things to people. He’s fairly young and not so long out of school.
I think there is a tie in there.

Finally, my aunt and I discussed creativity and how it can’t be taught in school.
That night I dream of a school that tries to teach it and doesn’t do a good job…