At Home Mechanic

Back to the dream: My current hobby car, a 1987 Honda CRX Si, was parked just outside the entrance to the garage on the driveway. I was using some sort of rotary power tool, it was not clear in the dream if it was polishing and buffing motor or if it was a drill. I was using it to clean or cut a piece associated with the left front wheel of the car. In the dream, the power tool stops working, there is some sort of electrical short in the power cord or its plug. I touch the plug of the power tool with a screwdriver to fix the problem and the heat that is in the power plug of the tool is conducted into the screwdriver that I am holding.

The blade of the screwdriver heats up to the point that it begins to melt and pools of molten metal fall to the ground. I drop the screwdriver just before the heat of the melting blade cause the screwdriver's handle to melt.

At this point my hobby car, which is parked just a few feet away, suddenly drops every ounce of oil and gasoline contained in the oil pan and the gas tank. Before my disbelieving eyes this flammable combination flows up hill from under my car towards the spot on the ground where the molten screwdriver is laying. I watch in horror as the deadly liquid is about to be ignited. I know that my car, my garage and my tools will be consumed in an inevitable explosion of flames.

And then I woke up. I had to remind myself in my groggy, post sleep haze that my car is safely parked in my current garage. The car is not leaking any fluids and that my tools are not melting on the ground. The dream was so disturbing that I could not go back to sleep and instead I went to the kitchen and made myself a cup of coffee.

For you amateur shrinks who read this description of my dream I have a few other details about my conscious life to add to this story. I have had some love/hate issues with my hobby car recently. I have been under a lot of self-imposed stress to fix a string of minor but nagging and annoying problems with the car as I have been preparing it for its semiannual smog inspection. Just as I would find and fix one problem, another would appear. After much work and worry I had the car in condition to face the inspection. I sweated through the inspection procedure, sitting on pins and needles. It was a huge relief when the inspection tech gave me a big thumb up when the car passed.

As I write these words my car is running better right now than it has ever run before. Subconsciously I may have some issues about losing my hobby car after I have put so much time and attention into it. Losing the car would be devastating.

Hmmm ... the funny thing is that while I was working so hard on the car I had some moments of doubt about my relationship with my hobby car. I had dark thoughts about abandoning this project car if the trouble could not be resolved.

I invite all of my readers to express your interpretation of my dream and post them in the Comments section of this site. It would save me the consultation fee with a real psychologist and I could use the money on more car parts.