Road Apples
Dec. 15, 2008


You dream what you eat

By Tim Sanders

Last week I was reading an AP story about a 29-year-old Spokane woman named Gypsy Lawson who was convicted of smuggling a monkey aboard a flight from Thailand to Los Angeles. It was your typical monkey-smuggling story, where the smuggler sedated a rhesus monkey and hid it under her blouse to feign pregnancy. And she would have gotten away with it, too, had she not boasted of her sedated-monkey-smuggling exploits to a store clerk who turned her and her monkey in to the Federal Sedated-Monkey-Smuggling authorities. I only mention it because it reminded me of my occasional monkey dreams, which are caused by eating jambalaya.

Perhaps I should explain my dream theory. When I was in graduate school, we had a psychology professor who was a fan of Carl Jung (pronounced NUTZ). Jung was a Swiss psychologist who believed that a person’s dreams held all the answers to his mental health. Dreams, according to Jung, were very symbolic. If you were to dream of fishing on a really nice mountain lake, the lake in that dream might look like a lake to you, but to Jung it would represent the organic unity of all things. The fish you caught would all be part of the collective unconscious, and the worms you used for bait would symbolize little tiny male sex organs. I don’t remember what the mountains represented, only that the dream could never, under any circumstances, have anything to do with wanting to go fishing in a really nice mountain lake. None of this dream theory stuff was actually Jung’s fault; it was all due to the fact that his parents dropped the tiny psychologist on his head when he was a baby, and when he grew up he snorted a lot of cocaine.

At any rate this particular psychology professor said we should keep a note pad near our beds and jot down our dreams. At the end of a week we could turn in those dreams anonymously, and she would analyze them for the class. I had some good dreams, and when my well ran dry I made up a few which were even better. I wanted to be sure and give the poor woman plenty of grist for her psychological dream mill.

To her credit, the professor was able to find symbols everywhere. She even found symbols in one student’s dream about playing quarterback in an Auburn/Georgia game. She said the football itself represented the universal embryonic egg, which spoke of fertility. The dream had nothing to do with either Auburn or Georgia, it was only a metaphor for a deep-rooted human desire to compete for reproductive rights. I suppose that explained the part about the naked cheerleaders in the huddle.

The point is that I’ve developed my own theory about dreams. It is loosely based on two notable historical figures and their most famous statements:

THE LATE CARL JUNG: "You are what you dream."

THE LATE JULIA CHILD: "You are what you eat."

If those statements are true, and if A equals B, and A also equals C, then it logically follows that several capital letters are lying around unused. It also means that B equals C, which translates into "you dream what you eat." If you doubt that theory, just consider this: When Ebenezer Scrooge was first confronted by Marley’s ghost, he accused the ghost of being an undigested bit of beef or a blot of Arby’s Horsey Sauce. That was because he thought he was dreaming, and he knew full well that your diet influences your dreams. No less a genius than Charles Dickens supported my theory.

Which brings us back to my monkey dreams. Over the years I’ve probably had no more monkey dreams than your average person, but I have had enough monkey dreams to notice a distinct pattern. I dream about monkeys after I’ve eaten jambalaya for supper. If you haven’t been dreaming about monkeys, you probably haven’t been eating jambalaya.

Here are some other dream-related foods you might want to put on your list:


COCONUT - You’d think that coconut would induce monkey dreams, but the relationship between the human intestine and the human brain is much more complex than that. I seldom eat anything containing coconut because that particular substance triggers an unsettling dream about a troupe of insurance salesmen who invade our living room. They are not scary, only annoying. They keep gnawing on the coffee table legs, climbing the curtains and throwing bits of paper at us. The one with the longest tail is always hawking term life policies.

PIZZA - In college, when I had pizza before going to bed I often dreamed about Sophia Loren. In my Sophia Loren dream she was usually stepping out of the Aegean Sea wearing that clingy little wet outfit she wore in the movie "Boy on a Dolphin." I know pizza was involved because of the anchovies and pepperoni in her hair.

CHICKEN - Chicken will cause you to dream about flying. In my flying dreams I am never soaring gracefully above the clouds like an eagle, only flapping my arms, bouncing about fifteen feet into the air, and then falling back to earth again. Were I ever to encounter a Kentucky Fried Eagle franchise, I might be a little more aerodynamic in my flying dreams.

WATERMELON - A slice of watermelon before bedtime will make you dream about frantically trying to find a public restroom. Either that or it will make you dream about swimming.

PINTO BEANS - I personally guarantee that if you eat enough pinto beans for supper, you will dream about either a) sousaphones, or b) gunfire.

OCTOPUS - I bought an octopus at a Kroger store once, and took it home and cooked it. I may not have cooked it fully, because it tasted a lot like the pencil erasers I used to chew on when I was a kid. That night I dreamed I was at a party wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts and some black socks. I looked like my dad. It was a very uncomfortable dream, and I would not recommend octopus unless you are an exhibitionist.

BOILED OKRA - Not surprisingly, eating boiled okra will produce horrific nightmares about ... eating boiled okra.

HAM AND CHEESE - This inevitably leads to the familiar dream about arriving late for an exam and realizing that, through no fault of your own, you’ve missed the entire semester and have no earthly idea what the test is about. Even if it’s been several decades since you were in school, a ham and cheese sandwich will do that to you. If you add mayonnaise, you’ll show up for that test in black socks and boxer shorts.


I hope this has been helpful. Now that you understand that those 180 lb. Mexican vampire bats who’ve been chasing you around in your dreams are only the four fajitas with jalapenos you ate three hours before bedtime, you can rest easier. Consider it my Christmas gift to you.