<h1>The Charge of the Night Brigade</h1>

There in the valley below me dwell my girlfriend's people. They are gentle farmers permanently bent from the hours of picking strawberries. I have never met them and their faces have no recognizable features. They are blurred, like the faces of crime suspects on the realty shows. All is peaceful but from the far end of the valley I can see a dust storm caused by horses riding fast. I take out my binoculars, bring the dust storm into focus and say to my betrothed "Prussians! and they are well armed!" As they close in on the farmers, they begin to fire, expertly picking their targets off.

"We have to do something," my companion screams.

I have only my father's ceremonial sword. A sword against guns! It will have to do. I dig my spurs into the horse. He rises on his hind legs and away we go. We outrun the wind. I am leaning forward with the reins in my left hand and my sword in my right, swinging menacingly,"Faster! Faster!" Both the horse and I are breathing hard, grunting and snorting and still I cry "Faster! Fas.."

"Doug,Doug, wake up, wake up." My wife is shaking me.

"Huh?"

"You were having a dream and bouncing around like you were riding a horse."

"I was."

"What?"

"In my dream, I was riding a horse. How did you know?"

"You had both hands in front of you, as if holding reins. Your legs were bent at the knees and you were bouncing and breathing 'whosh, whosh' now go bck to sleep"

It was of those dreams, vivid, virtual reality dreams. Read on:

Sleep disorders are very common in patients with Parkinson’s disease including hallucinations, vivid dreams, violent movements during sleep and restless leg syndrome.

Vivid dreams in Parkinson's Disease are quite common. They may be accompanied by yelling or thrashing about during sleep. If this is occurring, it may represent a condition called REM-sleep Behavior Disorder.

REM sleep occurs in brief spurts of increased activity in the brain and is considered as dreaming stage of sleep. In REM sleep, eyes move rapidly beneath the eyelids. Dreaming mostly occurs during REM and the body is essentially paralyzed to avoid the acting out of dreams.

Rapid eye movement behavioral disorder is characterized by the acting out of violent dreams during REM sleep. Sometimes the person with RBD will shout during an episode. Sometimes it will be violent that bed partners will be injured.(WebMD and others)

RBD!!!!!Sounds bad, but it isn't, yet. Not all dreams are nightmares and for those that are not, their high-def, virtual reality aspect makes them most enjoyable. It is like time travel. In my dream, my rush with my sword swinging in large circles above my head, caused the Prussians to turn tail and run, just as my wife woke me up. I tried to get back into the dream but as you know that is not possible. I was no longer a hero, just an ordinary PWP. My fairly mundane life was back. Maybe I will never be a hero in reality but hey, I can always dream, can't I?