HAYDAYS: Dreams with a twist

Deadlines. Generally, that's the main topic that provides the dark entertainment of my secret night life.

Then there are those long, fuzzy, stumbling searches for someone or some location in some unfamiliar town.

How about you? What recurring dreams, if any, complicate your nocturnal serenity? Are they directly linked with your job? Or, rather, to an unfortunate matrimonial predicament?

It's not so unnatural, I suppose, for me that I should still be hustling to meet newspaper deadlines even during my sleeping hours, for I've been spiraling in the routine of this wide-awake game since 1955.

A woman checker, about 40, over at my favorite supermarket, says she hears the click and clack of her machine all night through.

How about that nervous little guy in the lab coat who punctures patients' arms with needles for a living? Does he dream about his delicate duties? I didn't ask. I refrain from talking too much when facing people with needles in hand.

The originsAnyway, my cardinal problem with deadlines harks back to my first newspaper job - sports editor in a one-man department. By 9:30 each a.m., I was expected to have all copy, column included, plus layout, on the hook back in the printer's shop.

It was a hairy rush at times, such as those Saturdays when a prep football coach in a county outpost would call in his score and game details around 9:25. "I know your deadline is 9:30," he'd say, "but I know you don't mind if I call in a little early."

Kidding me, wasn't he?

Then he'd throttle me with a dramatic play-by-play of his team's triumph of the night before. Often, though, after losing, he'd opportunely forget to call in.

Even now, long into retirement, fully awake, I'm apt to smile when 9:30 comes and goes.

Still searchingAs for those wild-goose chases that sporadically hound my dreams, I've still not learned what I'm supposed to be hunting for.

This summer, because of an emergency upheaval in my daily medication, my world of the snooze has been supplemented with a few new feature attractions.

Suddenly, to mention one, I've started running in bed. That's it. Now why should I, dead to the world, lie there with my legs pumping furiously? For the exercise? I've no clue.

Recently I awoke with a muffled shriek when a wild, furry animal, fangs bared, leaped at me from the foot of the bed. After my wife pacified me, she asked what'd happened. Was I going to tell her that I'd just been attacked by a bloodthirsty wolf?

Ah, how small the step between nightmare and dream.

This very day, before settling in here at my desk, someone awakened me from my deep, essential, post-luncheon nap by roughly yanking my left leg.

My wife would never awaken me in such thuggish fashion.

"OK, OK," I said, sitting up. And opened my eyes.

I was alone.

One good thing about dreams. You feel so good when you wake up.

Retired Sentinel staffer Ed Hayes, 82, welcomes your views and suggestions. Write to him in care of the Orlando Sentinel, MP-72, P.O. Box 2833, Orlando, FL 32802-2833.