I rememebered a dream last night. That doesn't happen very often with me, so it can sometimes be an important event. In this case it wasn't the dream itself, but rather it's ending.

(Skip to ending.)

I'm a passenger in a car, back seat. We are driving on a winding mountain road in a sudden snow storm. Naturally, the driver loses control and we go over the side and plunge down toward the trees far below.

"Now would be a good time to put my seatbelt back on," I think in the dream. But I can't move because the acceleration has me pinned in my seat.

Ooops. My physics training kicks in. "I should be in free fall."

So I look down at myself to see why I'm pinned. I actually seem to be on my side...

On my side in bed...

On my side in bed and my eyes are closed...

At this point, the dream imagery, which is still mountainside and trees rushing at me, sort of moves back a bit and fades to black. But I still have that scared, anticipatory feeling of the impending impact with the trees, even though I'm pretty sure now what is really going on.

I feel confident that if I let myself go back to sleep, I'll finish that plunge into the trees, still un-belted. But I also still can't move.

I understand that I'm probably just going through sleep paralysis, so I don't struggle to move. I lay there a moment and think about the situation. Then I roll over onto my back without even thinking about trying to.

The anticipatory feeling fades away now, but it's 5 in the morning, I have a full bladder and a raging pain in my neck from having watched TV in bed last night. A trip to the bathroom relieves the first, provides Advil for the second and unfortunately, completes the waking up process. It took me more than an hour to get back to sleep.

But at least I didn't finish crashing into the trees. Or if I did— I slept right through it.