I scratch my chin and ponder whether its best to remember a dream when I wake up or have it permanently erased from my consciousness.

And then common sense sets in and its obvious the answer to my question depends on the dream.

Some dreams generate pleasant memories. Some dreams do not.

The good news for me is that interpreting dreams totally is out of my bailiwick.

For instance, how would one accurately interpret this dream I both had and remembered last week?

I wont bore you with details, but

I penned a postcard addressing my concerns about the allowable catch of halibut off the shores of Alaska. Unfortunately, at the post office, I dropped my all-important communiqué into a slot posted for contributions only instead of for local or non-local mail.

To rectify my error, I perused the interior of the post office seeking paper to drop in the contributions slot explaining that my first entry wasnt a contribution, but should be shipped regular mail.

Not finding a scrap of paper, I discovered a gray stocking cap to write on. As dreams go, I next walked into the classroom of a teacher at a school which I never attended. While borrowing a black Sharpie from him, he commented on the stocking cap Id stolen.

While sitting in the hallway writing my message on the stocking cap to shove into the contribution slot, a policeman walked up and wrote me a $15 ticket for stealing a stocking cap.

To make a long story short(er), the policeman was smoking a cigarette indoors, I yelled, Citizens arrest!!! and he pulled out his ticket book and wrote me a ticket for $150.

Quite likely, justice was served.

Anyway, thats my dream that doesnt need interpretation.

When working as a freelance writer, I applied for a position to write for a company that interpreted dreams. Believe it or not, I didnt get the job.

Possibly one of the most famous dreams of all time is recorded in that black book we cant mention in public schools.

That dream came to a dude named Joseph. He was the youngest of a bunch of brothers who werent crazy about him because he was Dads favorite.

Its always staggered me that Joseph not only had a dream he remembered where all his brothers came and bowed down before him, but that he had the gumption to tell them his dream.

Imagine being the older brother of Dads favorite who tells you he just had a dream that you and numerous other siblings would one day be groveling at his feet.

Not a way to earn friends and influence people!

Of course the brothers, after rolling the dice and deciding not to kill Joseph, threw him into a pit and then sold him to a caravan of traders headed to Egypt.

Finally, thousands of years later, Ive uncovered a personal theory as to why Joseph told that dream to his brothers.

You see, later on in the story its revealed that Joseph had the innate ability to interpret dreams. Since he exhibited the ability to interpret dreams when he was imprisoned for refusing to kowtow to the lascivious demands of his masters wife, why wouldnt Joseph have had the same ability when he was younger?

Why not tell his brothers the truth whether they liked it or not?

Oh well, whats the purpose of all this?

Maybe the lesson to be learned from this article is not to yell citizens arrest to a policeman, whether hes smoking in public or not.