Fever Dreams

 When I was a child, I could always tell when I was getting sick because I would have a recurrent hallucination that I thought of as my "sick movie". It was not a dream, per se, because it would come to me while awake and kind of in that dozing off phase of sleep. I would see this vision not behind my eyeballs but on my walls.

The vision was always the same. I would see a cartoonish man with a large gut. He had sparse, stubbly salt and pepper hair sprouting all over his body. His shirt did not cover his belly. 

Down the wall from the large-gutted man, another fellow was dressed in knight's armor. He would climb onto a waiting horse. Then he would charge across a dusty terrain toward the large gutted man. There were times when I would see tubleweed float by the knight and his horse. Sometimes the horse would be halted by a cactus or a rock. The horse's legs continued running while butted up against the impediment, like in a video game. 

If I was going to be really sick, then I would see the knight find a sick (dying?) person and get off the horse and hug them. If I saw the knight rescue the sick person, I knew that I would be staying home from school the next day. If I only saw the knight/horse running toward the large-gutted man, then it was 50/50. 

I stopped seeing my sick movie at some point in high school. It left me confused. Where did this vision come from and where did it go? More importantly how would I know when the sickies were coming for me? Why a fat knight and a man with a hairy stomach? Was it the Triaminic - Orange? 

For years I wondered about this dream. It's wild to think of a child as young as 5 years old hallucinating these strange characters as they were falling asleep. As a kid, when I was sick I was always given Triaminic - Orange. That stuff was goo-ooo-d. I slept like a rock after taking Triaminic - Orange. No matter how sick, sniffly, coughy I was, the Triaminic - Orange knocked me out for the night. I woke up feeling refreshed. 

When I was just out of college and more responsible for my own health and well-being, I got a wicked cold. I felt awful and was having a hard time sleeping. I just needed one night of great rest. Then I had an idea - Triaminic - Orange. I went to the drug store to find my sleep aid. As I was looking through the children's medicines I saw other Triaminics - purple (garbage) and red (nope) but not orange. Where was Triaminic - Orange? I asked someone at the store, "Do you carry Triaminic - Orange?" The response was interesting, "No, haven't sold that in awhile. That stuff is like really bad for you." 

WTF was this person saying about my beloved childhood medicine? Turns out Triaminc - Orange had an ingredient that has since been banned by the government. Which is concerning when you took as much Triaminic - Orange as I did in my childhood through high school (and maybe even college?). And then there's the real question of whether my fever dreams were in fact Triaminic - Orange - induced? 

I will never know for sure. I still enjoy thinking of myself as a child prophet whose only fortune-telling skill was telling myself whether I was going to be sick the next day rather than a drugged-up eight-year-old.