I hardly dream at all anymore. Well, I mean obviously I dream, but I hardly ever remember anything about them most nights, not even a fading memory of having dreamed at all.

But when I was younger I had a few recurring dreams. Three of them.

1) I'm in a school but it's not my school. Beneath this school is a room full of dirty showers, and after I go through it I continue to descend into a dark and filthy sewer, of which level after level exists beneath the school, becoming more and more like a catacomb than a sewer. Somewhere in the deepest levels one or two people-who-are-monsters, or perhaps monsters-who-kind-of-look-like-people, come after me in one form or another.

2) I'm walking along as part of a dream, any dream, and suddenly my "dream camera" zooms out, way out, all the way out, almost instantly retreating into space and giving me simultaneously the sensation of becoming extremely small and getting extreme vertigo. It always woke me up.

3) I'm doing things in a dream, any dream, and at some point, whatever's going on, for some reason I try to jump a barbwire fence. Maybe I'm chasing something, maybe I'm running from something, maybe I'm doing it for fun, but every single time I somehow catch my testicles on the barbwire. I instantly freeze-frame the dream and rewind it in my head, trying again. I recognize suddenly that this is a dream and that if I try hard enough I should be able to change the outcome and make myself clear the fence safely. All I have to do is focus hard enough on altering the details. But no matter how many times I try, I always catch the barbwire over and over until I wake up.