This is where dreams get complicated. Last night, I dreamed that I went outside to drive somewhere and my car was not there. I knew it had been stolen. And not only had it been stolen, but it was the second time that week that I had a car stolen (my green car had been stolen on Thursday; I think this was Sunday and my tan car was now gone). I was supposed to pick up my daughter no later than 6 p.m. How was I to do that? And, yes, there was an old, banged up, blue station wagon in the driveway, but it had been so long since that car had been driven that I didn’t know if even could be driven. And think how long it has been since I had seen the key.

I was very angry about my cars. I knew that I was the only one who had cars stolen on a regular basis. Yes, these two cars were not the first that I had taken from me. I kept thinking of more that had disappeared over the years, of all the claims I had made on the insurance company. I even thought of the car that had been stolen and then found, and that was sitting at the gas station/repair place on Rhode Island Avenue near the Subaru dealer. Why didn’t I go to pick up that car? Repairs should be finished by now. Oh, yes, I remembered. I went there several times, and each time they looked for my car, but couldn’t find it and told me to come back later.

When I woke up I thought about this dream. And I realized that this was a recurrent pattern. That I often dreamed of stolen automobiles. And that this was just the most recent. That’s one thing I was sure of. But…..was it true?

During the pandemic, for a period of months, I kept an informal dream diary, to write down dreams that I remembered after I awakened. During this period of time, I had many “recurrent dreams”. By “recurrent dreams”, I mean dreams that at least were closely related to past dreams, often related closely to a series of past dreams.

But, as I said, was it true?

During the period of time that I was writing down my dreams, each dream was different. No two dreams were closely related to each other. Certainly none were clones. There were none which I could identify as recurrent.

So the question is: does one have recurrent dreams, or does one only think that a dream is recurrent?

You may think you have an answer to that question, but I will tell you this. Whatever your answer is, I, for one, don’t trust it at all.

Gotta close now. Going somewhere. Hope my car is still in the driveway.