From the Mayor's Desk

I can’t remember when they started, but I’m guessing it was when I was around 10 years old. And I certainly can’t recall the very first time, because there have been so many. I would guess, however, that over the past 25 years or so I’ve had no less than 200 dreams about tornadoes.

They’re never exactly the same, but always similar. I’m usually out and about - sometimes driving, sometimes not. And most of the time, these aren’t the kinds of tornadoes that sneak up on you, but rather the kind you can see coming for miles. Sometimes I’m with family, sometimes among strangers, rarely alone. Often I’m driving on a gravel road and will see it coming, and will make a mad dash to some unknown farm house and jump in the basement just in time.

Fortunately, over all of this time, nobody’s ever been hurt. The tornadoes come and go, destroying property but that’s about it. The dreams are definitely more common during storm season, but happen year-round. If I watch a show on tornadoes or read about one that hit somewhere else, you can just about guarantee that sometime between dusk and dawn I’ll be battling yet another one. Strange, isn’t it?

And the worst part of it is how real they’ve become. You know how sometimes, even when they’re still going on, you know that dreams are dreams, so they really aren’t so bad? That’s how it was for awhile, but for the past 5 years or so they have become so unbelievably real. In my dream, I’ll be saying to myself, “Well, I know ‘dreamt this hundreds of times but this time it is, without a doubt, really happening.” And then, of course, I’ll wake up and realize it was nothing more than another chapter in this strange story.

I use to be scared to death of storms, but now, mainly because I’ve been through so many of them in my dreams, the fear has all but vanished. Now when the storm sirens ring, I have a hard time going to the basement. I keep wondering what if I miss my chance? What if there would be one that cruised by and I was hunkered down in my basement and missed it? For some reason, I think if I could see one for real, maybe the endless barrage of twisters would end.

Maybe somebody that knows something about dreams could tell me what all of this means. Maybe in a past life I was killed in a tornado? Possibly if you have recurring dreams it means you are lacking in some vitamin or mineral? Maybe it just means that I’m weird.

So, with storm season just around the corner, while you’re dreaming about winning the lottery or catching the world’s biggest catfish, know that I’m more than likely making yet another mad dash to a cellar somewhere.

There’s nothing I can really do about it, so, Mr. Sandman, bring on the twisters.