"Some of the content before you..."

This dream was back in February, actually. I thought to write down the main elements and analyze them before putting it all in my journal.

Because of the varying themes, I believe that this was actually a series of several dreams in a single sleep cycle.

I remember that in the first scene, I was in my apartment, but my apartment was more like a spacious condo, with a beautiful wood finish, a huge living room, a nice, roomy kitchen, and steps leading to a foyer. There was plenty of light, and long, brown drapes that hung from tall windows. As I recall, I had several people visiting my apartment, none of whom I recognize from waking life, and some of them kept pulling down my drapes.

After the scene in my apartment came a scene with a strange warning. It was about a dangerous internet icon, a cartoon dog who hacked into people's personal information and used it to defraud them. This scene never popped up again.

Then came a recurring scenario about a group of miniature cartoon characters who appeared to be a cross between the Care Bears and another group of 80s cartoon characters called the Shirt Tails (at least that's what I think they were called), and they all lived in my apartment. There was also a middle-aged, blonde-haired madwoman, whom I'll call the "cookiemaker," because in the dream, she baked a batch of evil "killer cookies" that came to life and went out to kill the cartoon characters living in my apartment. Eventually, one of the cartoon characters was killed by the cookies while trying to fend them off along with his friends.

Somewhere down the line, a reenactment of Lord of the Flies began to play itself out, with Bruce Willis playing the part of "Simon." For those who haven't read the book, Lord of the Flies is a story about a group of adolescent boys who become stranded on a deserted island after their plane crashes. Somewhere in the story, the boys hunt and kill a wild boar for food. They cut off the head of the boar and impale it upright on a stick. "Simon" is the one who goes crazy and begins to believe that the boar's head is talking to him. In the dream's version, however, the "cookiemaker" is the one who is killed, not a wild boar, and her head is cut off also, but rather than being placed on a stick, the face on the severed head has transformed into a hideous monster. Also, while "Simon" eventually dies in the original story, in the dream, he is the last man standing, left to his madness.

Sometime after the death of one of the cartoon characters, and before her own death scene, the "cookiemaker" arrived at my apartment with her boyfriend, both of them dressed in swimwear (apparently I had a pool, although I had never seen it). For the entire scene, they stood outside the entrance to my apartment. But there was something different about the "cookiemaker"--rather than the evil, maniacal, middle-aged madwoman I had seen before, I saw a sweet young girl about my age, somewhat ditzy, and very much in love with her boyfriend. I began to feel sorry for her and grieve for her as I watched her with her boyfriend, because I knew what "Simon" was going to do to her. Fortunately for me, the scene changed before it got to that point.

The next thing I knew, I was going door-to-door with my mom, visiting relatives, mainly my nieces, nephews, and their parents. We had come to their homes to examine the toys that the kids were playing with. Each toy had a hidden message encoded within it, and Mom and I sought out to decipher these messages. Among these strange toys, I saw Barbie dolls with special-made, reinforced legs, and action figures whose heads popped off with little or no force.

During these toy examinations, the television was on, showing various programs. I paid no attention to the television until the very end of the dream, when an infomercial was about to air on FOX-41. Only the voice I heard on the preceding opening announcement was that of one of the WAVE-3 meteorologists, and the voice said, "Some of the content before you is a scene before you." Just as the infomercial was coming on, the dream ended, and I woke up.

As soon as I woke up, I tried as best I could to hold on to the key elements before my recall faded, wrote them down, and thought about what the dream was trying to say. It actually didn't take me very long to figure out the main message.

It's pretty obvious that this dream was an information dream, reminding me to look carefully at my life and the world around me--things are not as they seem. This is true for a lot of things. When you think about it, every one of us has had to put on some type of "game face" when presenting ourselves to the outside world--sometimes to be professional, sometimes to hide insecurities and inadequacies about ourselves, and sometimes to hide evil intentions.

The infomercial was a perfect example of this idea. Many of the infomercials we see on television offer products that the advertisers claim will change consumers' lives, and in many cases, they have to stretch the truth or exaggerate in order to get their products sold.

There were also other elements in the dream that conveyed this message. Take the "cookiemaker," for instance. She was at first portrayed as an evil mastermind, but later turned out to be a sweet, ditzy young girl who was in love. The Barbie dolls were stronger than they appeared to be, and the action figures were not so tough as they appeared to be.

I'm not quite sure where Lord of the Flies, the cartoon characters, the dangerous dog icon, or even my apartment fits in to all of this--this is why I said this might have been several dreams in one cycle--but this was the message behind all I had seen. Only time will tell how this will apply to my life.