SLEEPLESS NIGHTS AND A LOST JAR OF BABY-TEETH

Right now I'm sitting up in bed letting my contact lenses suffocate my eyes and writing awkwardly with my "Cromwell mint casino" pen (a friend of a friend let me steal it from her). It's 1:47 A.M.

While in my bed experiencing my usual inability to sleep between the hours of 12 and 6 A.M., I decided to write down some of the dreams I've had over the past few weeks. I've been meaning to write them down but haven't attempted to do so til now. I decided to do this in an attempt to relax. I need to relax because the fear of impending stress is keeping me awake and therefore causing more impending stress. You see, I have to take a math test in around six hours from now. Then I have to explain and apologize a million things to my history teacher for having been unable to complete the assigned essay. And I'll have to do all this on not enough sleep. On a side note, I've been sleeping like crazy in the afternoons. A sign of a physical ailment or depression? I don't know which.

Anyway, about those dreams; Ah yes, a recent theme that jumps out at me is teeth - my teeth. Another is aquariums I think..., but that's another story altogether. As for the teeth, I can first remember the longest dental-related dream from last month.

I'm in a convertible (my car of choice). there are other people, friends, in the car. I can't remember whether I was driving or not. We're stopped at a red light when a when a (dark? grey?) van pulls up parallel to the left side of the convertible (with the top down). It's one of those vans with the sliding side doors. These doors are open and some people lean out of the van towards me and say:

"You don't brush your teeth." I say,"Yes I do", but they insist. "No," they say "We know that you don't brush your teeth.."
I say,"Yes I do brush my teeth, only once a day though. I know I should brush them twice but I really do brush them everyday. I maybe don't floss as much as I should, but still..."
"No," they say "you never brush your teeth."
Then I look inside the van. In the back seat (which is technically where the front of the van should be) are a bunch of captive people. There's this one guy who's clutching himself and rocking and he's muttering "They say I never brush my teeth either, but I do. I don't floss but I do brush and they say I never do."

That morning I woke up and brushed my teeth for five minutes. I even flossed.

The next dream occurred early last week. I dreamt that I lost my upper left front tooth and the one next to it.

Then late last week I dreamt that I lost a lower tooth towards the back. In the dream I was thinking "I'm lucky that the tooth I really lost is not so visible, 'cause a few nights ago I dreamt that I lost these prominent teeth up top."

After both of these dreams, the first one especially, i woke up and instantly put my hand to my mouth to check for missing teeth.

I think that teeth dreams have something to do with appearance. Somewhere in between inner and outer appearance, I'm afraid they may be rotting or that other people will think they are. The third dream in the sequence however, provides some sort of relief, as if I'm going to change in some way, deeper down, but in a way that others will either not notice or look down upon. Perhaps I'll lose a rotten part of myself but should take better care of what's left of me so no more of it rots.

I read something in a dream dictionary that made a lot of sense and now I've further developed my analysis. The change that I'm feeling is my getting older. I'm turning sixteen in two weeks. Sixteen is the middle of the teen years. Last year, my best friend went through a mid-teen-life crisis and now I'm going through one. Fifteen still sounds young. I like all the things associated with youth. the mid-teen life crisis reminds me that I will soon be an adult. If I don't eat right (which I don't) as an adult I'll be unattractive. Then I will be old. Old people don't have any fun. They can't go dancing, or have sex five times in a day, or eat salty foods. Then you die. Teeth are first lost when young children are turning into older children. Loss of teeth would represent the fear of maturity, death, agility and loss of beauty. I'm more afraid of being old than I am of dying. I don't want to ever have to wear a diaper, and use a cane, and take an hour to walk across town (forget running). I know that healthy old people exist but not-so-healthy teenagers aren't likely to grow into them.