Stories From My Childhood: The infamous dog in my bedroom story

My family and I talk about this story to this day.

When I was a kid (and, well, up until 5 years ago) I was scared of dogs. The fear lessened little by little as I grew older to the point that I could function around dogs. But as a child, dogs were one of the scariest things on the planet (second to bees, tornadoes, thunder, fire, hamburgers, dying and answering a question wrong in class).

One night, when I was about 6 years old, I woke up in the middle of the night to some barking. I looked over the edge of my bed and saw two dogs - a little black one and a large white one. The little black dog ran away as soon as I saw him, but the large, white dog just stood there and starred at me. I mustered up every single ounce of courage I could find, climbed out of bed and escorted the dog to the front door and let him out. I immediately went to my parents' room to tell them what had just happened. Their response? It was just a dream.

What? I just showed the most amount of bravery ever in my 6 year old life and my parents didn't even believe it happened. For years I harbored ill-feelings towards my parents for the lack of support in this instance. Occasionally the story would come up and I would feel so dejected when my parents would continue to disbelieve my story when I KNEW it was true.

Years later I found out that my mom never knew that I REALLY thought it had happened for real. She always thought that I was just being silly keeping up the act that it was real.

Also years later (at like age 20), I finally conceded that it really was a dream. How could it have not been a dream? How did the dogs get in? Where was the little black dog? So many holes.

I think what made me believe so strongly for all those years that there really had been a dog in my room was the fact that I got out of bed and went to the front door and then to my parents' room. If it had been a dream, I would have woken up and been in my bed before I went to my parents' room. But since I went from the front door to their room, it had to have been real! It is the only (known) time that I have sleepwalked.

The reason I finally decided it had to be a dream is a trick I learned for determining if something is real or a dream: In real life, you see through you own eyes; in a dream, you are able to see from an omniscient point of view - you can see yourself as if you are someone else watching the story unfold. And while a dream could be from your own point of view, if the memory includes seeing yourself do something instead of just seeing it through your eyes, it was most likely a dream.