Has this happened to you?

I worked in television full time for over 30 years as a cameraman
and editor. I started out shooting news, sports and documentaries.
Eventually I worked my way into shooting entertainment product
such as game shows, soap operas, music videos, commercials,
conventions, and multi-camera shoots. "You name it, I shot it", and
I loved every minute of it. Then I retired... I have now been retired
for 15 years, but to this day I dream about my working days nearly
every night. But my dreams all have an interesting twist...in my
dreams, all of my filming assignments involve an obstacle of some
type that prevents me from successfully completing my assignment.
For example, a faulty camera cable, a lens that won't focus, bad
head sets so that I can't hear the booth, faulty tapes, (no tapes),
production van won't start, or it started but I can't find the location
and I'm late. Get the picture? There are dozens of other scenarios
of not being able to shoot film or tape... Then there are also movie
projectors with blown lamps, broken film without a splicer...with
a full audience waiting for the show... In 15 years of dreams, I
have never successfully completed a single shoot...not one.

I've told you this story with a smile on my face, as I've often been
told that this is fairly normal. We get old and wonder what would
have happened if we never retired...

How about you?
 
Nope but after chanting to myself that I wanted to moon walk in my dreams it eventually happened after two years of waiting.
My old career was coding. I haven't dreamed about programming thank god.
 
Last edited:
I graduated college (film school) but have dreams I am back there, at my age, finishing! Like I never finished. Only one time I was going for my masters but the same school. Same people but older there. Or sometimes this goes back to high school, and finishing (as if I never did)... I suppose since I never really had a long career, this is the same dream of sorts.
 
I used to have ones like @indietalk described - because I DID drop out of college and finally went back (part time) many years later.
After I finally graduated from school #2, I stopped having the dreams where I was back at school #1 with some obstacle like what @Rayandmigdalia described. Maybe I stopped having the dreams because I finished, or maybe simply because it was a better experience.

The thing with obstacles sounds like a result of writing screenplays - always trying to get obstacles in there for your main character :)
 
I probably have the dreams because a high school teacher threatened to fail me senior year for ditching her class and in college there was a core English class I was worried about passing (because it wasn't film I didn't care lol)... so that anxiety caused the dreams I am sure, even though I graduated both. With honors in college I must say! Magna cum laude. ;)
 
I'm called back to active duty (USAF) and for some ungodly reason, flying the E-3A AWACS out of Stavanger AFB, Norway. And no matter what, I can't seem to complete my mission. I can't find my quarters to get suited for a mission, I'm wearing my 40 year old pea green flight suits (which I still have a few) instead of the new camo colored sand ones (which is like wearing a WWII bomber jacket while flying a B-2), my crew's all drunk, I'M drunk, fleet service overfills the crappers with floaties instead of filling the tanks with JP-8, someone stole my #4 roast beast box inflight lunch, or I run into a flock of geese at rotation (I lost 24 friends and colleagues from a Canadian Geese strike immediately after takeoff). For whatever reason, I've yet to complete that ONE final dream mission. Sometimes it's a humorous reason, sometimes not so much. I aborted one Norwegian takeoff when an alligator crossed the active runway (that actually happened, but back in Homestead AFB, Florida). EVERYBODY I flew with is in their 60's now, and many of us have similar dreams... and we all wish for just one more mission in life. But we're quickly getting to the point where we can't even put together one single crew. But isn't that what we all want? Just one more mission, whatever that may be.
 

Attachments

  • Yukla-27-Memorial_dt.jpg
    Yukla-27-Memorial_dt.jpg
    144.5 KB · Views: 141
I did just under 21 years in the Navy and not a day goes by that I don't dream of being back in the Navy... Usually some desert somewhere, picking up a spook who shouldn't have been out there in the first place and then moving him all over the place to keep him from being captured, tortured, and decapitated. I remember one time when a huge cobra showed up out of nowhere and was just about to lay into a guy I had with me. A guy I had carried over 8 miles of desert. The guy thought I was going to shoot him as he didn't see the cobra behind him. We ate very well that night. Turns out where we were? There aren't any cobras in the area but the sand storms carry them in... Sometimes from hundreds of miles away. Another time, I was walking in a melting snow stream of water... At one point, the laces on my left boot became untied. I stopped, bent over to tie it and as soon as I did? I heard bullets hitting the ground next to me. This is the kind of stuff that can make one believe in God. I dream about these events and more ALL the time but always with a twist that did not actually happen.
 
Last edited:
I never had cobra, but I've put worse things in my mouth. I flew on the equivalent of your Willy Victor, and we went through several SERE courses including POW Survival, Escape & Evasion, and I not only ate, but learned to appreciate rattlesnake, slugs, worms, cockroaches, and things that still wiggled all the way down. I knew guys who used to catch and eat "two-steps" (banded kraits) and even worse, baluts! But your dream reminded me of something my WWII Marine dad told me before I left for basic training (besides the life-saving advice "keep your feet dry and your bowels open")... you'll hear a lot of bullets, but you never hear the one with your name on it.
 
LOL. I've eaten Balut many times... In fact, the first time I ever ate Balut, I was in the Philippines with a friend whose wife's village we were visiting. We were staying with his in-laws for a few days. One night about an hour before dark? All the women and children went out into the rice patties with sticks and gunny sacks... My friend and I were sitting on the porch drinking beer, watching all this and had no idea what was going on.

At the same time, older women were setting up huge metal pots on a level piece of ground...

Right before dark, the women and children started dragging the sacks back into the village and laid them by the older women with the huge metal pots...

The first women in the assembly (disassembly) line had these nice little round knives... I saw them reach into the gunny sack and pull out a huge rat. In 5 seconds, the rat was gutted and skinned with it's head cut off. The next women in line cleaned the carcasses with water. The next women in line rolled the carcasses in a mixture of flour and cornmeal with lots of spices. The next women deep fried the rats and placed them on huge bamboo platters.

White rice, fried rats, and beer. It was quite the feast.

Kinda like this...


LOL. I just watched this myself... These people are a little slower...
 
Last edited:
Unknown Screenwriter & Maxsdad -

First, I want to thank you both for your service. I didn't qualify for military service.

When I was in my early teens I worked for two summers on a charter fishing boat taking tourists out fishing for flounder & weakfish (inshore) or bluefish and albacore (offshore). The captain had been a sailor in the Pacific during WWII (he was an old salt, a great fisherman [we always came in with something even when everyone else got skunked] and was a fantastic boss); subsequently, we took out a lot of veterans groups. Those 2+ hour long trips offshore in the early morning seemed to bring out confidences. I heard all kinds of truly horrifying and heroic stories, things combat vets don't usually share with non-military types. This is probably what gave me my interest in WWII and military history in general. I met men who liberated Nazi death camps, men who had been shot down, or had their ships sunk, or wound up in concentration camps. I met men who survived Omaha Beach and Saipan and other infamous battles. I have never related these stories to anyone except in extremely vague terms.

I was "brought up right" - to address older men as "sir" and to be polite and respectful. After a couple of weeks working on the boat I became well-muscled and nicely tanned, which made me look a bit older than I was. My appearance and manners got me asked, quite a few times, about my service in Viet Nam. Perhaps this is why I was told all these stories. I was only 14 or 15 at the time. All through my life I have had the privilege of hearing such tales.

My own weird dreams mostly involve myself as a musician; I would get on stage and my arms wouldn't be long enough to reach the keyboards, or I would play and no sound would come out, or what I played was not what was heard. I do have one recurring dream that has haunted me since I was a kid. I'm standing on a beach with other people near a jetty/breakwater. There is a large dark shape under the water very close to shore; it looks sort of like a shark. It suddenly shoots out into the water like a torpedo and then there is a huge explosion in the water. Someone screams "It's the Thunder Child!!!" At that point I wake up sweating with my heart pounding. This dream has caused one strange regret; I always wanted to start a hard rock band and call it Thunder Child, but it never happened.
 
WOW! I can't get passed the symbolism in your dream, or the fact that it's screaming "ADULT ACTION COMIC BOOK" with Shark Man playing in a heavy metal band (and then maybe taking a big old bite out of Captain America's perfect ass). Maybe it's time you started that rock band, at least on paper.
 

Attachments

  • 8369_925_shark_Guitar_1_1.jpg
    8369_925_shark_Guitar_1_1.jpg
    42.7 KB · Views: 147
I appreciate that... I really do. I never really gave it a lot of thought. Just doing my job. I did recently (about six months ago right before Covid-19) have a strange incident happen to me that's caused a few dreams of all my service to reoccur. I have a local coffeeshop that I frequent. This coffeeshop has what they call, a computer room. I sit all the way in the back. I've been sitting there for over 15 years. When I don't show up to this coffeeshop? People worry that something's happened to me. I'm also quite literally called SECURITY because I've been asked MANY times to come out in the front and deal with asshole customers... The owner is a friend of mine.

Anyway... I'm back there one day and this guy is sitting back there at the table in front of mine. Every once in awhile, he turns around and stares at me for several seconds, then turns around and goes back to work. After an hour of this? When he turned around again? I asked him, "Can I help you?"

He asked me if I was ever in the Military. I said, yes... Then I proceeded to tell him what branch and what command I was in. When I told him the name of the command? He then asked me if I ever flew into Panama and picked up a bunch of Marines. I said, yes to that as well. Then he stood up, thrust out his hand, and told me that he was one of the Marines I'd picked during that excursion. Tears were streaming out of his eyes. Then he hugged me. He said that if we hadn't come when we did? He wouldn't be here today. He then told me he got out of the Marine Corps, went to school, got a degree, then went back into the Army as an officer... He had recently retired as a Major and was now trying to become a writer.

The back room has four tables... Often, there are 2 or more people per table. When I got up to go get a refill? He stood up and started CLAPPING and then asked everyone else to stand up because a HERO was walking past.

WTF? I got my refill and then stayed out of the back for almost an hour... Embarrassed. LOL. I was just doing my job at the time. Would I have died for the guy? Absolutely. You just somehow get into that mindset and it sticks and while this incident was pleasant in and of itself? I ended up having a lot of dreams come back that it took me years to shed.

A lot of them bad.

Bittersweet.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top