Late at night,
Young boy dreaming,
As he sleeps
He hears screaming
Over the trees
A cloud is forming,
Grandpa’s dentures
Flying, swarming
Every tooth
From every jar
Flying after us,
Chasing cars
People crying
False teeth flying
Snapping, biting,
Clacking flying
We run with all
The other people,
Seeking shelter
In the Church steeple
They chase us high,
They follow low
Biting and clacking
Wherever they go
I duck low
My desperate defence
They miss and chomp
On the cyclone fence
We run to the tunnel
The false teeth follow.
I see them snapping
There’s no tomorrow
Then it was tomorrow. My mon swas shaking me awake. “Wake up David, or you’ll miss the launch!..” I rubbed my eyes and crawled out of bed as mom adjusts the vertical hold on our tiny black and white television. My brother MIke, still a toddler was already up and seated in front of the set. There on the pad, sat Astronaut Alan Shepard in his '"holding pattern’' as technicians swarmed over the Redstone rocket that would soon launch is Mercury capsule into suborbital flight.
The flight of Freedom 7 was the only reason I can date this dream, the earliest I can remember. My first psychotic dream coincided with the launch of my lifelong interest in spaceflight. I believe the source of the dream-- if such things can be ascribed-- was that within the past few weeks I had discovered that my great-grandfather kept his teeth in a jar-- a shocking idea to any five-year old, and that I watched a lot of television back then. A Cleveland station made a mid-day children's program hosted by Captain Penny. He had one of those wind-up sets of fack teeth that woudl open and snap shut until the spring wound down, and one day the camera focussed on that hideous, clacking rictus.