Welcome to my nightmare

We spend a third of our lives sleeping.

At least most of us do.

Me, I don't sleep much. I ascribe to Thomas Edison's theory that, and I quote here, "It's a waste of time."

But when I do sleep, I dream like you wouldn't believe. I dream in vivid colors and my dreams have interesting and entertaining plots and twists. I'm a regular Steven Spielberg when I'm asleep.

Sometimes I can remember my dreams and sometimes I can't. I wish I had written down some of the dreams I've had because I could include them in my book I'm going to write when I retire. That's right, Klonie's going to write a book. It's going to be a doozy. Reserve your copy now because I promise you, you will never have read a book like this before. They can go ahead and reserve my Nobel Prize for Literature right now and save themselves some time and trouble later on.

Anyway, back to this dream thing. When I do remember what I've dreamed about, I can recall the details.

Most folks can only remember what they dreamed about for a few hours after they awake. Then, they forget them. This is a psychological phenomenon. Have you ever awakened in the middle of the night and suddenly had a brilliant idea but you didn't write it down because you told yourself you would be sure and remember it, but then when you woke up, you only remembered that you had a brilliant idea but you couldn't remember exactly what it was.

This phenomenon is called "oopsiforgotsit" and it strikes all of us. I'm convinced that scientists have come up with a cure for cancer at some point during a "brilliant idea" session in the middle of the night, but they didn't write it down, so they forgot it by the next morning.

So keep a notepad by your bedside and immediately write down those wondrous ideas you have during those psychological "moments of clarity" in the middle of the night.

So here I am at 3:30 in the morning writing this column and I just had a couple of dreams that I can recall.

In one of them, somebody was being executed by lethal injection. I don't know who it was or what they did, but they were about to get a dose of "the juice." Instead of being strapped to a gurney, they had this poor old guy strapped to a chair, the kind they normally use during execution by electrocution. Guess they couldn't afford a gurney what with the economy being what it is and all.

So there was this guy and they were executing him and for some reason I was having to pay for the chemicals, which were a little pricey. I was standing there watching the chemicals fill the tubes as they began to administer the lethal dosage and it seemed like way more than they needed to use and I was counting the ounces and it had reached about $300 worth and I remember saying to myself, "This is going to cost me a bundle and I don't have a bundle. I am but a low-paid (albeit it highly talented) newspaper person and we don't make that kind of money."

So I made them stop the execution even though the poor old guy had already received more than half the lethal dosage.

So I went into the execution chamber and was standing there in front of the condemned guy and he was sort of loopy from the half-dose of lethal drugs and I told him that this was costing me a lot of money and I sure would appreciate it if he would go ahead and die a little faster.

How weird is that?

And then he started laughing and broke the straps that were holding him in the chair and he pointed at the corner of the ceiling and there was a camera and then everybody started laughing and it was one of those practical joke TV shows and the whole thing turned out to be a hoax, which was good for me because I saved $300 in lethal chemical bills.

They say that dreams are interpretable, that they mean something.

Maybe they do, I don't know. I bought a book one time about how to interpret dreams but it turns out that it was written by one of those psycho-babble witch doctor types. You know, the kind who cuts the head off a chicken and buries it in the back yard and dances around it naked to cure warts.

If dreams do mean something, I reckon this one probably has something to do with my beloved Oakland Raiders. I had just watched them blow a big lead for the second straight week to fall to 1-3 on the season. That team has a self-destruct button somewhere on the bench because they can play well for one half and then forget what they're supposed to be doing in the second half.

So I guess the execution represented the death of another season of my hopes for the Raiders. And the part where it turned into a practical joke? Well, maybe that represented the way they play. Or it could represent owner Al Davis laughing at us Raiders fans while we suffer and this team breaks our collective hearts. Thanks Al. You're a peach.

And the $300 represents the $300 Al Davis owes me for the NFL Sunday Ticket TV package I bought because the only reason I bought it was so I could watch the Raiders games. If I had known they were going to be this lousy, I wouldn't have bought it.

"Just win baby." That's Al's motto, you know. Hah!

Guess I'm not the only one who's dreaming.

Klonie Jordan (editor@gaffneyledger.com) is executive editor of The Gaffney Ledger.