Ciminski’s ZZZs
A dream is a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind while they are in a sleeping state. When a cartoon character is in a deep sleep often they are seen with a thought bubble of a few ZZZs. People are commonly told that they dream in the deepest of sleep, but most do not know that this is actually false. There are a total of four stages of sleep a person goes through and dreaming is just the first. Once a sleeper survives the scary nightmare of clowns or of falling they can finally rest peacefully. To what extent do the dreams get so bad that a person loses more sleep worrying about the nightmares then actually relaxing? Of course, that depends entirely on the individual and what it is that causes them the most anxiety. For junior Andrew Ciminski, a terrifying dream actually prevented him from sleeping for years.
“[The scariest dream I’ve had] was when I was really young; I recall memories of ‘drowning’ in a pond.” After waking up for countless nights sweaty and worried, Andrew would later learn that he wasn’t drowning at all and it was all just a dream. However, to children in the moment, dreams and reality blur together and if they are dreaming of being chased they had better run for their lives. Andrew added, “[I remember] almost falling into a pond full of ducks.” After having the “dream” mo
re times than he could recount, subconsciously he would learn that he was far from the pond. After accepting the fact that he wasn’t going to drown, Andrew started to ease up and was finally able to get some quality sleep.
Now, this dreamer no longer has to worry about which pond full of ducks he would fall into next. Andrew might be getting good sleep, but he still has something worth fearing after being stung in the neck by an angry bee. When it comes to dreams, Andrew said, “None of them scare me as much as bees do!”
