You may say I'm a dreamer.

For as far back as my memory takes me, I've always been the lucky recipient of fabulous, vivid dreams.

I dream in color.  I dream in black and white.  I dream of flying, of swimming, of floating, of dancing, and of all sorts of other fabulous adventures that I could and would never really do in a waking state.  Sometimes, when I'm really lucky, I'll have one of those dreams that I can control, just a little bit.  Those are super fun.

And I dream about people.

I dream about family and friends, both long gone and current.  Sometimes though, I dream about people I don't recognize.

I'll wake up and remember what I was dreaming about, and then as I start to piece it together in my sleep-foggy brain, I will realize that one or several characters from my dream are people I don't know.

And this freaks me the hell out.

Who do these strangers think they are, sneaking into my brain like that?  The nerve.  THE NERVE.

Get out of my brain!  STRANGER DANGER!!!

I mean, who are these people, really?  Are they people I've seen somewhere before, but maybe I just don't remember them?  Or is my brain busy creating all these people from scratch?  No wonder I can't remember where I left my keys.  My brain is too occupied with CREATING WHOLE PEOPLE.

Sometimes I walk around places (ok, it's Wal-mart, since that's virtually the only place I ever go), looking suspiciously at everyone I encounter.  Is that the person I dreamed about last night?  Is that the stranger who invaded my mind?

It never is, by the way, which tells me a) they really are people my mind totally created or b) I need to look somewhere besides Wal-Mart for my dream friends.

But in either case, it still concerns me that all these strangers have access to my mind.  What if they're all up in there, Inception-like, and at some point I won't be able to tell dreams from reality?  What kind of havoc are these unknowns wreaking in my not-too-stable-anyway mind?

Ah well, just one more thing to keep me up at night, I guess.

Which could be a plus.

If I'm awake, it will keep the interlopers away.