I have a handful of recurring dreams. There is the one where I go looking for the bathroom and can’t find it, get lost along the way, or it is so gross and disgusting that I can’t go in. Sometimes the bathroom door, once opened, changes into a completely different place, maybe even a forest or an abandoned building. In another dream, I find myself in a hallway full of doors, and the hallway never seems to end. The hallway might be dimly lit or bright, but often the carpeting has a dull, mind-numbing pattern. Some of the doors there are locked, and some are not; a few are wide open. Sometimes my doppelganger is there, either inside or in the door jamb. Those are the worst. They are nightmarish, claustrophobic, and I can’t get out of there fast enough. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to walk. When I wake up from those, I am full of anxiety.
Another recurrent sees me back in high school in front of a long row of lockers. I can’t remember where my locker is or the combination, and I need to get inside because my paper is in there. It is way past due. In some cases, I haven’t shown up for class all semester. I won’t graduate. I can’t even find my classroom. And yes, it is not lost on me that this is an offshoot of the hallway dream, only at a school the corridors were much wider compared to a hotel or an apartment complex.
Another common theme in my dreams is the epic search. There is something I need to find or someplace I need to go, and the settings vary a lot, land or sea, street or forest, desert or beach, but the importance is paramount. I need to get there. A variation within this one is the highway, on the road, and I am in a car just driving while the landscape blurs on. Sometimes there is someone with me, and other times I am alone. And if there is someone with me, then I don’t always know them, or they might be someone I know but look completely different, or if they are the same, then their name is different. This might be my most common recurring dream. In these dreams, people and places are interchangeable. Nothing is what it seems.
Next on the list is the soccer dream. This is a really common dream, too. Sometimes it is in the game. I am mostly playing well, because there’s a song in my head so I have flow, but then suddenly in the final third, at that crucial moment I miss the cross, lose sight of the ball, can no longer dribble or shoot, even if it is an open goal, I just can’t hit it. By far the most prominent version of this dream is even worse, where I can’t even get into the game because it takes too long to put on my gear. The game has started, and I am on the sidelines struggling with my shin guards and socks and shoes. For some reason, it takes ages to get ready, like the entire half. When I played the game, I never had these kinds of dreams. That’s important to note.
Last night, I dreamed it was an important game in college, possibly a playoff game. I was getting ready. I nodded to my teammates, Joe, and then Aare. Sometimes in these dreams, I have misplaced my game jersey, but mostly it’s something to do with my shoes. Or I can’t find my socks. My pre-game ritual was always the same, first the green stretchy under sock, left foot, and then right, followed by left shin guard and right, and left sock, right sock. I did this every time, every game, every practice. I had two pairs of these super light dark green socks, and I wore them multiple times a week as a protective layer for decades. How they lasted all that time, I will never know. They fit on my feet like a glove. In my dream though, they weren’t even in my bag. I didn’t have game socks either, so I borrowed a pair from my teammate, Shane Ness. He had them all bundled up in a ball, and I hate when people do that. Okay, so far so good. At least I had socks. No green layer, but what else could I do? It was a big game. I tried not to let it affect me and remained focused on the game, on the necessary mental preparations of elite athletics. Here was the real kicker: I had no shoes. I always carried my black Adidas shoe bag and the red one, as footwear was dependent on the field conditions. Inside both bags were Adidas Copa Mundials, or Copas, the classic black and white shoe with the three stripes, supple kangaroo leather upper. I always wore them because the fit was a perfect mold. Put on another pair of shoes, and it just wasn’t right. I couldn’t get the proper touch. Yes, believe me, the right equipment made all the difference. No shoes! Frantically I searched for my phone to call my mom, see if she could find them and bring them to me, but phones weren’t a thing back then, so I didn’t have one. And then while I was trying to remember where I left my shoes, I realized where they were. They were in the basement of a house I had not yet bought but would in about 15 years. I had no way of getting those shoes. All was lost. The game was lost, everything was lost. I felt so defeated, so devoid of hope. In short, I had been crushed. Luckily, I woke up soon after that. I still felt awful. I wished it wasn’t Monday. Before I went to bed, I had great plans for the day, but upon waking, they deflated. Tell me why I don’t like Mondays.
What is this world of dreams? The prior day I had spent some time going through things in an attempt to get more organized, the success of which was dubious because such things are often counterproductive and really just amount to moving an item from one place to another. I did, however, come across an old soccer bag, and inside a pair of shoe bags, one red and the other black, and inside each, a pair of Copa Mundials. Why do I keep them? I am way beyond my playing days. And these shoes? They wouldn’t fit anyone else but me. And here they are, preserved in a case. And for what? Why? Why do we hold on to these artifacts of the past?
I have no answers for that. I dutifully put the shoes back in their proper bag and packed them all away to another place for another day, another memory, and in between now and then, probably another dream.