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COMMENTARY
ET CETERA
DISPATCHES
LISTS
FEATURES
CORRECTIONS
MAILBAG
REVIEWS NEUNER
OLEAR
RICHARDS
STERNE
MASTHEAD
CONTACT
SUBMIT
SUBSCRIBE ARCHIVES
LISTS
The Listmaster's Top Ten Recurring Dream Characters 1. Hobbyhorse Harry -- A favorite of my pre-K years, Harry would rock back and forth in a deceptively playful but subtly menacing way. Nobody screwed with Harry. 2. Ayatollah Khomeni -- A fixture during the 1980 hostage crisis. I had a horrifying cycle of nightmares about the Iranian leader entering my room through the window and snatching me from my bed. In order to allay my fears, my grandmother memorably said, "You're not important enough to be taken hostage, honey." 3. Charles K -- This character was very popular during my high school and college years. Someone was always giving him the business for no apparent reason, inducing befuddlement, fear, and alienation on the part of CK. At the age of twenty, Charles of the material world read The Trial and wondered whether dreams were contagious. 4. Hume Cronyn -- In a recent dream, Hume came into my room to berate me about a recent list which concerned his innards (see "Lists", 2/6), stating: "You fucked with my guts; now I'm gonna fuck with your head." I eventually talked him down, and I even apologized for my libelous claims about his late wife Jessica. Hume has been coming over more frequently lately, and I've had a grand old time hearing him dish on the Golden Age. I even got him to tell me a good joke about Joe Cotten's spleen. 5. Deanna Scarborough -- My first crush. A frequent character from 1983-1985 6. The Captain -- I probably should have brushed up on Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams during my research for this list, but regardless I have a feeling that this one-eyed captain with the long, slender cane and the Bible under his arm figured somehow in my Oedipal drama. He usually seemed to be the warden of a prison, but everybody called him "the Captain." A real puberty favorite, he usually followed a #5. 7. Boogers McGee -- My mom used to sing me this song called "Boogers McGee"* when I was little, and the character from the song sometimes enters my dreams as this crusty old Irishman who does nothing but sing his theme -- or if I fall asleep listening to the radio, one of the popular hits of the day. Generally he plays the role of the Greek chorus of my unconscious. For example if I'm having an anxiety dream about flying, I can often hear him in the background singing "Two Tickets to Paradise" by Eddie Money or "This Plane's Gonna Crash and We're All Gonna Die, Suckers," one of my own compositions. 8. Me -- According to Freud, every character in a dream is actually the dreamer himself, so I suppose I have to be on this list somewhere. You may have seen me in such nightmares as Falling off a Cliff or Naked in Class II. * "Boogers McGee, will you marry me?/Boogers, oh, Boogers McGee"
By Charles Sterne
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