The First Annual Cigar Dream Journal Contest has exceeded our wildest expectations. Although our proposal to sponsor a contest of dream journal entries featuring cigars was initially greeted with derision (and then, later, with scorn) we were confident of success from the outset. More and more people are smoking cigars; more and more people are keeping dream journals. It was only logical these trends should converge and a number of these dream journal entries feature cigars. Q.E.D. The entire editorial staff of Smokin’ wishes to thank everyone who submitted entries. (Note: Until such technology exists as can verify the contents of dreams Smokin’ thanks contestants for abiding by our strict honor system and surprise polygraph tests.) And now, the winning Cigar Dream Journal entries!
Dear Cigar Dream Journal,
In my dream I’m me, only different, and although I never smoke cigars before dinner in real life I am smoking a cigar before dinner in the dream — only I’m conscious of how strange it is, as though I were awake. Anyway, the cigar in the dream reminds me of someone I went to 3rd grade with, and who I read in the papers had recently been arrested for drunk driving, and I want to bring it up, but I’m afraid it might be awkward, so I just stare at the cigar meaningfully to communicate my thoughts and the cigar gets embarrassed and blushes and burns down to nothing in like one second flat and I’m left with nothing to smoke so I run to my tobacconists and right outside there’s a cigar store Indian and it looks just like Al Gore and then I realize it is Al Gore and I scream and wake myself up.
Dear Cigar Dream Journal,
Last night I dreamed that I opened up a box of cigars and when I looked inside there was Freud’s prosthetic jaw! The phony rubber jaw that smoked all those monster stogies! And was their sad result! Anyways, before I know what’s going on the ersatz jawbone starts a-yakkin’ away like there was no tomorrow — in German, only in the dream I could understand German because it was in English — and he’s going on and on about how he would be remembered by history and so forth, and then he stopped short and said he had a real hankering for a cigar and would I mind providing him with one — but I got all creeped out at the thought of putting a cigar in that rubber jaw, only it was like he could sense I was hesitant and he started chewing his way out of the box and howling and chasing me around the room — the rubber jaw! In the dream I couldn’t run very fast and the rubbery jaw was just about to bite my ear lobe — which was huge and dragging — when I screamed and my wife woke me up and Katie Couric was tickling Al Roker.
Dear Cigar Dream Journal,
Last night I dreamt that I was Rush Limbaugh’s stomach — except with full consciousness and my own “identity”. In the dream Rush and I are real pals — we do everything together and have a real time of it, though I “morph” out of his body now and again to sneak a smoke on my own. (Somehow in the dream the idea of a smoking stomach seemed perfectly normal.) When Rush finds out about this he gets ticked and decides to have me amputated. Then I realize you can’t amputate your stomach, but Rush says this is a dream and he can do whatever he wants.
Dear Cigar Dream Journal:
I am smoking a magnificent twelve-inch Brazilian “Blackie” while my Mutti is away at the beauty parlor. I am a child again — although in the dream I have retained several adult features — including an outrageous dressing gown and perfumed beard. But somehow, in the context of the dream, being a bearded child seemed perfectly normal. I thoroughly enjoy the cigar, puffing wildly and filling the room with smoke. When Mutti returned home she was furious! I suddenly realize she’d been saving that cigar for Papa, who had just been killed in the Africakorps. Her memento mori was now ash! Mutti shrieked, then tore the stub from my fingers and ripped off my beard, and I woke up. P.S. When at last my eyes adjusted to the light, there was Mutti (now eighty-eight) standing over my bed with a pair of large shears.
Dear Cigar Dream Journal:
Last night I dreamt that George Burns was playing Luke Skywalker in some new Star Wars movie. When he pulls out his light saber it’s a huge freaking Cohiba with a flaming tip. (Castro is Darth Vader and Foster Brooks is Chewbaca.) Chewbaca roars something to George at the very moment when George is squaring off with Darth. So George turns around really quickly to hear what Chewie is saying and he accidentally decapitates Castro with the flaming stogie! But Castro’s head keeps talking very calmly, as though he’s accepted it all and is willing to change with the times if that’s the only way to stay alive. We all sit around and have a nice smoke and then Castro’s head says to Darth: ìWho do you think you are playing God and killing people?î And everybody laughs because that’s precisely what Castro did, and then I realize hey wait a minute, George Burns also played God in all those movies with John Denver, and then we realize that George Burns and John Denver are dead and the whole thing just seems so ironic, except in the dream the word ironic means something totally different.
Dear Cigar Dream Journal,
In my dream I dream that while I’m smoking cigars they get longer instead of shorter. Then in the dream I fall asleep and I have another dream where the cigar is getting really really long because it’s still lit and I’m asleep and I sleep for like a thousand hours — Rip Van Winkle-style — and when I wake up — in the dream — the cigar is now twirled around my body like a boa constrictor and it’s still growing. Then I shift my body and it starts growing away from me and shoots toward the horizon out of sight, but I know that it’s putting others in danger so I get on the phone and try to warn people about it and I learn that it’s constricting someone on the other end, twelve thousand miles away, and then I realize that it’s gone all the way around the world and is constricting me again and I don’t know what to do and I wake up.
Dear Cigar Dream Journal,
In my dream I dream that a cigar is just a cigar. Then I wake up.
[If you have enjoyed these Cigar Dream Journal Entries please be on the lookout for our upcoming sister publication, Cigar Dream Journal Journal, available on-line and at fine tobacconists everywhere. Eds.]
Eric Metaxas is the author of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (but were afraid to ask). His humorous essays have been published in The New York Times and The Atlantic — Woody Allen has called them “quite funny” — and during college he was the editor of The Yale Record (the nation’s oldest college humor magazine). He has written for VeggieTales and is the author of over 30 children’s books, including Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving. Eric lives in Manhattan with his wife and daughter and is the host and founder of Socrates in the City, a monthly speaker’s series on “life, God, and other small topics.” For more information or to contact him, go to: EricMetaxas.com
