Ever since Inception hit theaters I've been thinking about dreams, and how the dreams in that movie don't look anything like any dreams I've ever had.

I know, I KNOW! The dreams in the movie are supposed to be manufactured dreams in which the dreamer doesn't necessarily know he or she is dreaming.  Please do not explain to me why Inception is awesome and I am stupid because I didn't "get" it.  I got it.  I don't hate it, I just hate how straightforward and ...picturesque all the dreams are in it. 

I had a conversation about this with my best friend.  She and I have some of the oddest dreams of anyone I've ever met.  She, for instance, is the only person I know who has dreams in which she isn't herself.

And I have dreams about really bizarre stuff, like airplanes shaped like toothbrushes, peach-flavored Triscuits  and snakes doing comedy.  I do not take drugs, either.

"Most people do have mundane dreams," she pointed out to me when I complained about the dreams in Inception.

Is this true? I decided to ask my mom.

"Well, I have boring dreams compared to yours." she told me. "In my dreams I only know I'm dreaming because it's Wednesday in the dream when I know in reality it's Friday."

I asked my dad and he says in his dreams he's usually running around in his underwear back in high school.  

I would NOT have complained if Inception had at some point featured Joseph Gordon-Levitt running around in his underwear.  Although he looked plenty good in the dashing clothes they had him in throughout the movie.

I digress.

One thing they did get right in the movie is the falling backwards stuff.  That always wakes me up.  In fact, my dad says he trained himself to fall backwards whenever he has a dream he doesn't like and that wakes him up right away.  My best friend says this doesn't work for her, though.  

The part about dying in a dream waking you up makes sense to me, but I actually had a dream in which I died and it didn't wake me up.  I was beheaded at the guillotine because it was the return of the French revolution.  Then I was dead and it really wasn't so bad.  Then I was alive again being carted off to the guillotine along with a bunch of other people. Everyone was all freaking out about it but I said to them, "Don't worry, I've had this done to me before, it's really not so bad." I think that was when I woke up.

So what about you? Did Inception's representation of dreams/dreaming work for you based on your experience?