We tried to fly to Germany, but forgot our passports

By John Toth

The Bulletin

We were running late already. The plane was leaving in less than an hour, and we still needed to get to the airport.

We were flying to Germany. We somehow got to the airport  and rushed to the counter.

Then I realized that I had made a horrible mistake. We left our passports at home.

I went from hurrying up and let’s get there mode, to what do we do now? There is not enough time to go back to get them. The plane was already at the gate.

A feeling of helplessness came over me. Maybe we could take a flight the next day. I hurried to the airline counter, but there was nobody there. I ran to find a bathroom, but they were all occupied, or in the open where everyone could see. I could not go in one of those. I was getting very frustrated.

Then I woke up.

I looked around the bedroom. I was uptight. My heart was pounding.

I got up and went to my private restroom. Then I walked over to my office and wrote on a piece of paper: “Column idea: anxiety dream, Europe, passport.” I wrote it down because I would probably forget the whole thing after I fell back to sleep. That’s how this column came about.

I’ve had some other vivid dreams that I remember because they keep repeating. I even know in the dream how they turn out. It’s like being in the movie, “Groundhog Day.”

I was in a school hallway and could not remember what classes to go to. I thought I had the schedule memorized, but I had not attended classes all semester, and now I had to take a test that I didn’t know anything about, or where the test was going to be. That was one of the recurring dreams I had during my younger days.

Someone was chasing me, and I could only run in slow motion. They were catching up to me. I don’t know how that turned out because I woke up before I got caught.

I was riding in a plane, getting ready for takeoff, but the plane just kept taxiing. It ran out of runway and was now taxiing on the highway. It stopped to let some passengers out, and then it continued to roll on the ground rather than start flying.

I hadn’t dreamed this one for a while, so now that I wrote it down and brought it to my mind’s forefront, I’ll probably get another dose of it in the near future.

I could become airborne just by jumping in the air and swimming like I do in water. The faster I swam, the higher I flew. It was usually to get away from someone chasing me who could not fly. In one dream, I flew to the very top of a large building’s ledge and sat there until the chasers gave up.

There are many more. What do they really mean?

I think absolutely nothing, other than I am anxious about something in my awakened stage. The passport-left-behind dream came after I watched videos of pier runners rushing back to the cruise ship after all-aboard time. It was funny. They all made it.

Many times when I have woken up all drained from one of these anxiety dreams, I had acid indigestion or started feeling sick. That probably explains the random pieces of information in my sleeping head coming together in a garbled mess. When I woke up, I felt like I had just run a marathon (in slow motion).

What are some of your memorable anxiety dreams you’ve had that made you feel relieved to wake up and discover you were still in your nice, safe bedroom?

Send your dreams to john.bulletin@gmail.com.