The most terrifying dream I ever had resulted from the entire school being pretty much forced to have polio shots when I was five, during the great polio scare. I had never had a shot before, my dad being Christian Scientist. I was already tense, because though I was in kindergarten, I could already read more or less, and the attitudes of the big kids made me read that yellow form we were sent home with that we were told WE MUST RETURN SIGNED. What I read scared the crap out of me, half-understood as it was.
Then the day arrived (this is still experience, not the dream) we were lined up and went down to the world war 2 bungalows that had been carted in for the overflow of kids. At one, on the top of the steps to the doorway, stood a woman in white nurse's uniform with a little table of stuff, and another woman ministering it. The big kids were lined up. Each would go up the three steps to the nurse,who would jab them in the arm with a pointy thing. The big kids would howl, and one kid was bleeding, but when it was done, they had to get in line for another one. (The shots in those days came in a series of three.)
You cannot imagine my terror. I already knew adults couldn't be trusted to keep you safe, that the worst danger came from them. That was it--I ran, hid, they searched the school for me, the principle got me to come out of hiding at the auditorium because just hearing her voice terrified me even more, I thought she had Powers. I was sent home with no shots, and there was actually no parental retribution for once, because (I figured out later) my mom had signed the letter without my dad knowing.
Forgive me for that long story, but now the dream will make slightly more sense: people, presumably everyone in the country, had to line up and lie down on these conveyor belt things. White figures would lay clay over your eyes and up your nose so you could be conveyed into a machine to kill you. I tried to run . . . well, the rest is typical dream terror. But that conveyor belt, and everyone getting on it, terrified me horribly. That dream would come back when I read about Holocaust genocide and other like subjects.
Other than that, I had/have pretty normal nightmares, plane crashes and the like--anything that involves being helpless against inimical forces.
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Date: 2014-05-22 01:38 pm (UTC)Then the day arrived (this is still experience, not the dream) we were lined up and went down to the world war 2 bungalows that had been carted in for the overflow of kids. At one, on the top of the steps to the doorway, stood a woman in white nurse's uniform with a little table of stuff, and another woman ministering it. The big kids were lined up. Each would go up the three steps to the nurse,who would jab them in the arm with a pointy thing. The big kids would howl, and one kid was bleeding, but when it was done, they had to get in line for another one. (The shots in those days came in a series of three.)
You cannot imagine my terror. I already knew adults couldn't be trusted to keep you safe, that the worst danger came from them. That was it--I ran, hid, they searched the school for me, the principle got me to come out of hiding at the auditorium because just hearing her voice terrified me even more, I thought she had Powers. I was sent home with no shots, and there was actually no parental retribution for once, because (I figured out later) my mom had signed the letter without my dad knowing.
Forgive me for that long story, but now the dream will make slightly more sense: people, presumably everyone in the country, had to line up and lie down on these conveyor belt things. White figures would lay clay over your eyes and up your nose so you could be conveyed into a machine to kill you. I tried to run . . . well, the rest is typical dream terror. But that conveyor belt, and everyone getting on it, terrified me horribly. That dream would come back when I read about Holocaust genocide and other like subjects.
Other than that, I had/have pretty normal nightmares, plane crashes and the like--anything that involves being helpless against inimical forces.