analyze this

I'm prone to having some weird dreams - very vivid and often very bizarre. There was this recurring dream I had when I was younger where my grandmother and I were staying in someone's house and then the house caught on fire. While we were trying to escape from the house we were shrunken down to about 2 inches tall. We were able to slip under the closed doors, but the stairs became a big obstacle. Once we finally made it out of the house we were in the middle of the desert and still two inches tall. And I distinctly remember having this dream about half a dozen times between the ages of 7 and 9.

Then there was the time where I had a continuing dream. I had a dream one night that involved me trying to run from these scary things - they really resembled the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz, but they were on wheels and wheeling around after me. I woke up just as I was trying to barricade the door of my grandmothers house and keep the monkeys out. phew! But, the next night when I went to sleep...we start right back up at me barricading the door in my grandmothers house and the monkeys trying to get in. They did. And I kept running. I'm fairly certain the monkeys left my grandmother alone.

Last night was the first time in a while that I have had a really bizarre dream. I needed a haircut, so I called a salon to make an appointment. I spoke to the woman who would cut my hair and she didn't have an appointment at a good time for me, so she agreed to stay open later so I could make it. The hair place was in this freakishly large empty building, so it took me about 20 minutes to walk from where I parked my car, through this mall-like building that had nothing in it. Finally I arrived at the salon. Out comes my hairdresser who was in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the hips down, and had these mis-shapen hands. She was extremely nice and we sat down with some books. She asked what I wanted to have done with my hair and I said I didn't know. Then she said "well, let me ask you this. Are you happy with the way your hair looks on a daily basis? Do you like the way it looks when you visit your grandmother?" After this consultation they told me that my haircut would cost $150. (In reality I normally pay $20 for a haircut, so this was crazy to me!) But I felt like since she had stayed open late, given me this consultation, and was paralyzed and with mis-shapen hands, I owed it to her to say yes. Then all these people came to the salon and they had a birthday party and then I woke up.

What I'm noticing is - all of these very strange dreams involve my grandmother. why is that? I'm not asking for an explanation of the shrunken 2 inch people, or the presence of the desert, or the monkeys on wheels, or even the paralyzed hairdresser with mis-shapen hands. I'm sure those are all very interesting and proof of some neurotic tendencies that I am already aware of. But, my grandmother? Why is she in all these weird dreams? That's my question.