I have interesting dreams. Many of them are movie-quality. If I could just record my dreams, I could provide an entire season of Netflix movies every year. Most of them are action-packed, get-the-bad-guys, or run-for-your-life dreams. Many others are simply terrible nightmares, though. Ugh.

But while I am usually pretty capable of remembering my dreams right after I wake up, they don’t stick around for long. An hour later, they are usually completely forgotten.

Today’s Bloganuary writing prompt was to write about a dream I remember. There is one. Just one. And I dreamed it when I was probably about 6 years old. Why I still remember that particular dream, I don’t know. But here it is.

The Horse Dream

When I was a young child, I attended St. Anthony Catholic School. The school’s playground also had an underground bomb shelter next to the building. When standing on the playground (which was really just a big paved parking lot), I could see this rectangular hole with steps leading down. The hole was surrounded by bars, presumably to prevent us little ones from falling through and down to the bottom of the hole. I imagine if I’d actually ever been down there, it probably had a door that led to an underground room, but since I’ve never been down there, I don’t really know what was there. I also assume, though I don’t really remember, that the steps were blocked as well.

Anyway, that’s the setting for the dream I had as a young child. I was probably in 2nd grade or so when I dreamed this.

I dreamed that I looked through the bars down to the bottom of the hole, and there at the bottom stood a white horse. It wasn’t a particularly beautiful white horse. It wasn’t the kind of horse you’d imagine a little girl would fantasize about. This horse was older perhaps? A little goofy looking even.

The horse spoke to me. In actual words. I admit I don’t recall the exact words any longer, but essentially, the horse was telling me that he was trapped and hungry. I knew I couldn’t free him from the hole, but I felt like I could at least feed him. Somehow, “magically”, a bottle of Barbecue Sauce appeared in my hand, and I laid down on the ground, on my belly, stretched my little arm as far down into the dark hole as I could reach – squeezing my shoulder past its joint, it seemed. I still couldn’t reach the horse’s head, so I tossed the bottle to him. He thanked me. I woke up.

That’s it. That’s the dream I’ve remembered for over 50 years. Go figure. Don’t ask me why I remember this one, or what it means, because I have no idea. It just is what it is.

How many dreams do you remember?

This post is part of the WordPress Bloganuary Challenge for 2022, where everyone participating is provided a writing prompt each day. Today’s prompt was to write about a dream that I remember.