My sophomore year of college, I discovered something very peculiar¹ about the way my mind copes with stress – dreams; very, very odd dreams. Now, that’s not to say nightmares or that awkward dream where you show up to school naked. I haven’t had a single nightmare since I was in 3rd grade² and the latter dream hasn’t been a problem since middle school.³ No, those are not the dreams I’m talking about. My dreams, my very peculiar dreams, are not difficult because they’re terrifying. These dreams are quite mundane, but always end with the distinct impression that my brain is mocking me.

These dreams are all very similar, but never repeating. They are all incredibly detailed and incredibly vivid; and they all occur from my point of view, in my bed, in my room. They tend to be simple, but that’s the problem. I have a dream that something mundane is happening in my room, and when I wake up, the dream was so perfect in every detail that I cannot perceive any difference, and therefore have no idea that I’m actually awake.

Once I had a dream that I was talking to a friend of mine about what to give another friend for her birthday. I woke up and was too groggy to realize my friend wasn’t in my room at 3am. So I kept talking to her. In fact, I was awfully frustrated when I submitted a few gift ideas and she refused to respond. I didn’t realize it’d been a dream until my roommate, Davy, woke up and asked me who I was talking to.

Forget showing up at school naked, that was humiliating. And worse, these dreams are not as infrequent as I’d like them to be. A few months ago, I dreamt I was writing in bed and woke up because I’d lost the pen cap. I searched for it for about 10 minutes.

But my absolute favorite of these peculiar dreams occurred at the beginning of my sophomore year of college. As I’ve said, the dreams only happen when I’m good and stressed, and my sophomore year was a prime occasion. I’d moved into an apartment with two of my friends, equally nerdy and equally unashamed of it. I’d spent the previous summer in San Diego, CA with Campus Crusade for Christ, where a spectacularly pathetic longboarding accident left me with 19 stitches in my chin and broke 6 of my teeth.⁴ I’d just started a new campus job as a shift supervisor for the campus computer labs.⁵ And among my 21 credits for the semester, I was taking organic chemistry, physics, and microbiology. Stress? Nah…

For about a month, I had these dreams every night. It was awful, but of all the humiliating dreams, one stands out as my favorite.⁶

In my dream, I was lying in bed awake, because I’d heard the front door open. I knew my nerd housemates were asleep, so there was no reason the door should be opening at all. And instantly I knew, in that peculiar way you simply know things in dreams, that someone had broken into our apartment and his sole purpose was to do me great bodily harm. As I lay in bed, I heard him creeping down the hall. I heard him grasp the doorknob to my room and woke with a start.

Oh no, I thought, he’s coming for me.

I leapt out of bed to the side opposite the door and frantically searched for something with which I might defend myself. There, quietly resting on my nightstand was what any sane man would use to defend himself from a violent and likely well-armed assailant – my cell phone. You know, those sweet, silver Nokia bricks that used to be so popular because they were so conveniently free.

I grabbed it and swung it forward in triumph. I was saved. I held it in front of my like a pistol and shouted,⁷ “Stay back!”

In my exuberance, I yanked the charging cord from the phone and it lit up, illuminating the whole room quite well and revealing what had always been there – no one at all.

“I’m an idiot,” I muttered in defeat. My brain mocked me for days.

Dreams. They don’t fight fair.⁸

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¹ Peculiarities. Yes, I have many of them. Shh…

² I woke up screaming from that nightmare. To this day, I can remember it perfectly.

³ Going to an all-male high school had its benefits. It’s hard to be embarrassed about going to school naked when everyone has the same … parts.

⁴ Another fun story. I’ve got plenty of them.

⁵ Like I said, I’m a nerd.

⁶ Among my peculiarities is my definition of fun. Therefore, my definition of favorite is also a little special.

⁷ Yes, you read that correctly: shouted.

⁸ R.B., this one’s for you. I hope there’s some consolation in knowing you’re not alone.