THAT DAY

Our upstairs flat's water heater died. Could we put in a heat pump instead? An electrician checks, says "Your house is a century old, running high voltage to the back and doin' it up to code is gonna be a nightmare."

I suggest "Could a plumber link us to the downstairs water heater instead? The upstairs doesn't use much, and two pipes on the south wall are just a few yards apart." Call the plumber. He'll come tomorrow to assess plan B...

THAT NIGHT

I dream I take a hot shower in the upstairs flat. Just as I'm turning it off, I realize the water heater for the floor was removed, and the pipes are still disconnected, it can't work until tomorrow at the earliest; so this has to be a dream. I don't take advantage of the lucid flash to go do anything fun; just think "This dream must mean I really want a hot shower!"

NEXT DAY

The plumber comes, approves the one-heater plan, and links the pipes. As he finishes and turns the water back on, I'm up in the empty, showerstallish nook where the dead water heater was. Turns out he forgot to plug one branch of the hot water pipe, so when the pressure goes back on, pure scalding-hot water blasts full-force from 6' up. I scream "TURN IT OFF! TURN IF OFF!", but by the time he does, gallons slosh around the steaming floor... and I'm drenched.

LATER

In the past, when I interpreted a dream inside that dream (yes, I've done that a lot), I've tended to trust those meanings. Surely the dream itself knows best!

But this dream dumps hot water on that. Even a self-interpreting dream can be wrong! I wasn't feeling grubby yet, and I didn't crave a hot shower; what the dream really meant was, "You're gonna get a hot shower, heater or not, like it or not." But that only came clear the next day.

Despite decades of dreamwork, I still default to psychological explanations--"I must have a craving I don't consciously feel." When the dream wasn't psychological; it was literal and predictive, warning of a scalding, messy, unlikely mishap.

Unlikely but preventable. If I'd been naïve, literal and superstitious, I might've ignored the plumber's assurances and jammed corks in those pipes--just in case. But Freud, that plumber of the psyche, misled me. So I (and a lot of other stuff) got drenched.

Be naïve, literal and superstitious. You'll be glad you did.

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