Dreaming in the Past Tense Last night, I had a very strange dream. It took place back in the year 1980, when my parents were still young and I wasn't even born yet. In the dream, I found myself standing on a street corner in a city I didn't recognize. The buildings were all older and more run-down than what I'm used to seeing, but there was something comforting about them, like they held secrets and stories that had yet to be told. As I walked down the street, I saw people laughing and talking with each other, wearing clothes that looked like they came straight out of an episode of "Happy Days". I passed by a record store that was playing music by The Clash, one of my favorite bands, and I felt a twinge of jealousy that I couldn't have been around to see them live. I continued walking and soon found myself in front of a movie theater showing "The Empire Strikes Back", which had just come out that year. I couldn't resist the temptation to see it again, even though I knew I had already watched it countless times in the present day. As I bought my ticket and entered the theater, I felt an overwhelming sense of nostalgia for a time that I had never even experienced. I wished I could have stayed there forever, surrounded by the sounds and sights of a decade that was long gone. But eventually, I had to wake up and come back to reality. As I opened my eyes, I felt a sense of loss and longing, as if I had just left behind a part of myself that I would never get back. Dreams like these always leave me feeling a little disoriented and out of place, but they also remind me of the power of the human imagination. Even though I wasn't alive during the 1980s, I can still connect to that time and imagine what it must have been like. Perhaps that's the beauty of dreams- they allow us to travel through time and space, to experience things that we may never get a chance to in real life. And even though we may wake up feeling a little bit sad, we can always hold onto the memories and lessons that we've learned along the way.