I’ve been having a recurring dream for at least 20 years. I’m riding in a bus, which makes a stop somewhere to let some passengers off and others on. The driver sets the brake and gets out of the bus to use a bathroom or something. A minute or so later, the bus starts to move. It takes a few moments for those of us on the bus to realize that there is no one in the driver’s seat.

There is a bit of a panic. And because this is a dream, even though just a minute before the bus may have been sitting at a bus stop I recognize somewhere in Seattle, now we’re on a long, winding road going down an unfamiliar mountain.

Somehow, I always end up being the passenger who gets into the driver’s seat, and I’m standing up on the brake pedal, trying to get the bus to stop. There are usually flames and smoke and a lot of panicked shouting going on all around me.

There is usually, also, a motorcycle or a small car wedged into the grill of the bus by the point I’m standing on the brakes. Oddly, I never, ever dream about the actual collision with the other vehicle. Also, there is usually an interlude in the dream at around this point where I and the driver of the other vehicle that we have somehow collided with, are having a protracted discussion about the physics of the brake systems of the two vehicles, the shape of the road before us, and the likelihood of survival.

While this dream is more than slightly nightmarish, it doesn’t quite have the usual effect of a nightmare. Because it is usually shortly after the physics discussion happens, that I, still standing on the brake pedal, turn and address the audience (which is actually the sleeping me) and comment on just how ridiculous several aspects of this situation is. Which means it can’t possibly be real, so I’m just dreaming and I’m really not happy with feeling scared about something that isn’t real. Sometimes I even turn to some of the other passengers on the bus and grouchily tell them to stop pretending to be scared. It’s just a dream, they’re just figments of my imagination. Nobody is fooling anybody else.

And that’s when I wake up. Feeling annoyed at myself for having the stupid careening bus dream yet again.

It’s not entirely unlike another recurring dream that I’ve been having for nearly forty years. In this one, I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of a car, sometimes it’s a car I recognize having owned before or a car that belonged to someone I know. I’m backing up. And something has gone horribly wrong, and neither the brakes will work, nor can I shift into neutral or turn off the engine. All I can do is steer. And I keep narrowly missing hitting things. Pedestrians and pets keep appearing in my path, as well as other cars, strangely shaped houses, trees, signs… the only thing that never shows up is a fruit or vegetable cart.

You know how in movie car chases there’s always a fruit or vegetable cart or a crate of fruit or vegetables? And they get hit by one of the careening cars in the chase, but the people around it don’t? My careening car dreams have never had that. And this isn’t the first time I’ve thought about it. And even though I have thought about that lack in these dreams, no flying fruit or vegetables ever appear.

Unlike the careening bus dream, I never internally break the fourth wall on this dream. It just keeps going on, and on, me narrowly missing colliding with all sorts of things. And I’m at least as angry that I can’t make it stop as I am scared that I’m going to crash and get hurt or that I’m going to hurt someone. I keep getting more and more stressed out as it just goes on, and I see no way to get out.

Until I finally reach a point where the anger boils over, and I think, “This is the stupidest nightmare ever.”

And then I’m laying in my bed, of course, my heart pounding. And no matter how many times this has happened, as I’m laying there waking up, I always have a little argument with myself about whether my realization that it was a nightmare is what woke me up, or was I already waking up when I had the thought.

In the bus dream, it’s clear that I have the realization that it is only a dream while the dream is going on. As I mentioned, I sometimes tell the other people in the dream that it’s only a dream and it’s time to stop. In the careening car dream it isn’t clear at all.

I don’t think it’s really important to know either way, but I’ve always been a little curious as to why the two dreams are so similar, and yet different.

My subconscious has never been subtle. If I see a tense movie with monsters chasing people around a neighborhood, I have nightmares about monsters chasing me and the people I love around my neighborhood. When I’m worrying about a project at work that isn’t going well, I dream about unpleasant things happening at work. And so on.

And I have the bus dream and the car dream whenever I’m stressed about something I can’t control. I’ve never seen a pattern to why I have one rather than the other. I try to be philosophical about them. It’s just my subconscious trying to process things.

But it’s annoying.

And completely out of my control.