I’ve been having some weird dreams lately.

And no, not the kind that make your significant other go “Ewww – you pig!” before committing you to a week of sleepless nights out on the couch … although those are certainly fun, too! No, instead we’re talking more along the lines of those dreams that you try to repeat in your head over and over again as soon as you wake up because really, even in your dreams, just how many chances do you get to chase that ex-girlfriend who ripped your heart out back in ’97 through Times Square while riding on a purple dragon whose voice sounds surprisingly like Samuel L. Jackson’s, emphatic vulgarities and all?! So far I’ve gotten three of those awesomely bitter flights … well, technically four, but during one she managed to lose us by taking cover amidst the middle of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade so that one sort of ended on a sour note. It was particularly sad to see Snoopy get caught in the crossfire that night, but we all know that some breakups can be ugly…

Of course, it’s not always flying dragons and flaming insurance mascots that float through this warped mind in the wee hours of the night. Sometimes I find myself swimming with orcas in the Sea of Gibraltar or bungee-jumping off the Eiffel Tower during the largest fireworks display that the City of Paris has ever seen … boy, was that one to wake a guy up in a cold sweat! But as life-threatening as so many of my nighttime stories seem to be, I guess I should be fortunate that dreams tend to deviate as far from normal, everyday life as they do. As much as I could do without waking up every twenty minutes because I’m being chased through the mall by velociraptors on what began as a mild-mannered trip to buy some hazelnut-scented candles for Mother’s Day, it sure beats eight to ten hours of aimlessly wandering the aisles of my local Wal-Mart Stupid Center because they keep changing the shelf-placement of the canned beets on me! Now that’s what I call a real nightmare!

You’ve gotta admit, though, as much fun as it can be to see what sort of bizarre, candy-coated dream world your mind will send you plummeting through each night after you’ve gone through a carton and a half of Ben and Jerry’s and finally concluded that there’s absolutely nothing worth watching on TV after The Late Late, Even Almost Early Show, it would be pretty sweet to get to pick our own adventures … even just every once in a while. And not simply for those adult encounters – you know, with tax forms and liability insurance and other things that grown-ups like to do – but what if, for example, I got to pick which kind of dragon I would be chasing poor Stacey* on through the streets of Lower Manhattan (* heart-breaking ex-girlfriend’s name has been changed to leave all of my ex-girlfriends guessing … right, as if they’d start reading my columns after we broke up!). I could fly on the shoulders of Xavier, the gold dragon, whose metallic armor blinds our enemies (well, mostly traffic copters in this particular scenario) as we soar through the streets in pursuit of justice and my I Love the ‘80s CD collection that “Stacey” conveniently “forgot” to give back. Or perhaps I would choose to mount Harvey, the aggressive blue dragon who leaves a trail of death and destruction nearly as shocking as the slew of frat-bound losers that Stacey went through after tossing this Dungeons & Dragons-loving dork to the curb when she found out that we both had very different ideas of what role playing really entailed…

So maybe my dreams are simply a front to seek a fiery revenge on those members of the opposite sex who have betrayed my honor and trust in the past, but ultimately I think that’s ok because if you were to consult any of them on their own favorite dreams along those same lines, while they might involve chasing me around on unicorns with big, sharp horns on their heads (the unicorns, not the ex-girlfriends, mind you … although…), I can assure you that in none of those scenarios would it be very likely that we’re just playing tag, if you know what I mean!

Still, as far as I’m concerned, the deadliest game of tag is still considerably more inviting than that Wal-Mart dream where the only thing falling faster than the prices are the sanity levels of the happy Wal-Mart zombies. Maybe if the big blue started selling dragon food, you might be able to peak my interest for a couple of winks, but what are the chances of anyone willingly eating food that came out of a Wal-Mart Sewer Center?!

Something tells me that I’ve got to stop watching fantasy movies this close to my bedtime…