I had a really strange dream last night

I dreamt that a retarded boy was being mauled by a dog. Even worse, the dog seemed to be focusing the attack on the boy's crotch. The boy screamed "He bit my d*** off!" and I called 911 for an ambulance. When I came back outside I was told that in their haste to help the boy other standers by had carried him to the hospital (which was 3 doors down from my house and does not exist in reality)

So tell me, is this indicative of some kind of mental illness?

If you're still running the dream by people a week from now or, say, find yourself compelled to produce charcoal/watercolor images of the event, I would seek psyciatric assistance. If you do wind up going the charcoal/watercolor route, PM me...I might be interested in purchasing a lithograph.

PB

I've just been a little miffed by it today. I got 5 hours of sleep last night, the last thing I needed was for it to be less relaxing than it could have been because of shit like this

encourage you to draw pictures of your dreams so that you can integrate the dream's meaning - it's the idea behind dream journals. You might want to write this one down though, instead of drawing it.

Wait ... you just wrote it down!

Never mind.

I swear this is true: sometimes I dream things that have nothing to do with my life and then afterwards I read something in the paper of an event that happened that is similar.

Seems to me you witnessed someone "helpless" being attacked (and losing something very basic to "survival of the species," i.e., his penis) by an uncontrollable animal... and while you went through the proper channels (calling 911) to help him, other people took matters into their own hands, and got him help faster than you did.

Apply all this to the current political climate (going through the proper channels to protect the innocent from a "mad dog" hasn't done any of us much good, has it? and perhaps the only effective means of change is through "bystanders" who band together), and see if there's any meaning in it for you. Or not -- that's just how I'd interpret it if it were my dream.

As for the nonexistent hospital, maybe there's a "safe haven" "right in your own backyard" you haven't discovered yet.

Ask me sometime about my recurring "Nazi experiment" nightmares. Horrible stuff, until I figured out that my very survival was dependent on crazed fascists trying to "change" me -- and on my ability to play along with their sick games until I could escape.

...really do think along the same lines. What you wrote is exactly what I was thinking. :)