Ever watched Quantum Leap? The early '90s American TV show starring future Enterprise captain Scott Bakula as a man who travels uncontrollably through time and space, landing in the bodies of various men and women and living as them until some wrong in their life has been righted? Well, I had a Quantum Leap dream last night.
Oh boy.
I dreamed I was a twenty-something woman, a little on the counter-culture side of things from what I could gather. Dark clothes, some kind of artsy hat, and vaguely purple jaw-length hair, as I recall...but we're talking about a dream, so the details are subject to interpretation. I was getting dressed in a hotel bathroom, and though I'm well aware how to put on a pair of overalls, the body proportions and speed and muscle strength were somewhat different from my own, so I was very clumsy to do so.
Once fully dressed, I started to step out of the bathroom and into the main area of what appeared to be a suite, but was chided by...someone; I don't really recall—almost like in a video game where Navi or Alia or Cedric shows up out of nowhere to warn you about something...about having the string of tiled jewelry that was supposed to run the circumference of my hat instead tangled up in a mass on top of it. I quickly untangled the string and pulled it around the brim of the hat, not fully understanding if I was even wearing it correctly. By this point I was fully aware that I was definitely in someone else's body, and as I've learned from all my time-traveling, identity-assuming TV shows and movies, the first rule is to act like you belong there until you figure out what's going on. The easiest way, I decided, was to stand off to the side, not engage in any kind of overly expressive body language, and not speak unless asked a direct question...and even then, to keep answers brief and with the kind of tone and casual verbiage I assumed my borrowed persona might use.
I came to learn that this person into whose life I'd stumbled had an older brother and one of those typical TV crime show dads with the sizable bald spot and the beer gut and the wife-beater t-shirt (I really wish I knew some expression other than "wife-beater" to describe this article of clothing, but it would not be inappropriate for this man). They were all hanging out in the suite, along with a few other people, eyes transfixed on some television hanging from the wall. In the midst of the idle conversation that was going, the brother found an excuse to walk past me and whisper something about meeting him in the hall. I got the sense that there was some sort of tension building between him and the father. I risked a couple of words to quietly announce my temporary departure, and I stepped outside to meet him. He began to talk about some sort of concern about the father, and some sort of potentially harmful plan to...I don't know, because this is about as far as I remember, and I started to wake up around this point.
Perhaps this isn't much of a story, but the experience of simply being someone else for a few minutes was fascinating, especially with no knowledge whatsoever of this person's history and personality, and the unspoken pressure to keep up an act. People often talk about walking a mile in someone else's shoes or taking on a fake identity, but truly being someone else—physically occupying a different body, and living a life we haven't pioneered for ourselves—grants a kind of perspective that is unmatched by pure imagination...even if, in this case, it was purely imagination.
Oh boy.
I dreamed I was a twenty-something woman, a little on the counter-culture side of things from what I could gather. Dark clothes, some kind of artsy hat, and vaguely purple jaw-length hair, as I recall...but we're talking about a dream, so the details are subject to interpretation. I was getting dressed in a hotel bathroom, and though I'm well aware how to put on a pair of overalls, the body proportions and speed and muscle strength were somewhat different from my own, so I was very clumsy to do so.
Once fully dressed, I started to step out of the bathroom and into the main area of what appeared to be a suite, but was chided by...someone; I don't really recall—almost like in a video game where Navi or Alia or Cedric shows up out of nowhere to warn you about something...about having the string of tiled jewelry that was supposed to run the circumference of my hat instead tangled up in a mass on top of it. I quickly untangled the string and pulled it around the brim of the hat, not fully understanding if I was even wearing it correctly. By this point I was fully aware that I was definitely in someone else's body, and as I've learned from all my time-traveling, identity-assuming TV shows and movies, the first rule is to act like you belong there until you figure out what's going on. The easiest way, I decided, was to stand off to the side, not engage in any kind of overly expressive body language, and not speak unless asked a direct question...and even then, to keep answers brief and with the kind of tone and casual verbiage I assumed my borrowed persona might use.
I came to learn that this person into whose life I'd stumbled had an older brother and one of those typical TV crime show dads with the sizable bald spot and the beer gut and the wife-beater t-shirt (I really wish I knew some expression other than "wife-beater" to describe this article of clothing, but it would not be inappropriate for this man). They were all hanging out in the suite, along with a few other people, eyes transfixed on some television hanging from the wall. In the midst of the idle conversation that was going, the brother found an excuse to walk past me and whisper something about meeting him in the hall. I got the sense that there was some sort of tension building between him and the father. I risked a couple of words to quietly announce my temporary departure, and I stepped outside to meet him. He began to talk about some sort of concern about the father, and some sort of potentially harmful plan to...I don't know, because this is about as far as I remember, and I started to wake up around this point.
Perhaps this isn't much of a story, but the experience of simply being someone else for a few minutes was fascinating, especially with no knowledge whatsoever of this person's history and personality, and the unspoken pressure to keep up an act. People often talk about walking a mile in someone else's shoes or taking on a fake identity, but truly being someone else—physically occupying a different body, and living a life we haven't pioneered for ourselves—grants a kind of perspective that is unmatched by pure imagination...even if, in this case, it was purely imagination.
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