Sunday, Feb 1st, 1976

Talk about nightmares! Until today I hadn't had a nightmare in years. Not one that I remembered anyway. I awoke with a nervousness that lasted for hours afterwards. I was sweating and never could get back to sleep. It started off like just one of those dumb dreams that are just collages of your recent memories. As it turned out, that's what it was but at the time it all seemed so real!

In a nutshell, I was at home here one night when I thought I saw someone over at the SS office when I knew the only person who should have been there was Cheri (which was weird enough!) working late. Then the lights flashed off. We grabbed weapons (hammers and other tools) and went over. A bunch of stupid kids had taken over the place and beaten Cheri to a bloody pulp! Oh, that was the horrible part! I stared at what was left of her for what seemed like a long time and then I awoke with a start. When I sat up in bed, I was facing that SS office window.

Just writing it down now makes me see how ridiculous it all was and yet I'm still nervous. Even for a few minutes after I woke up it was hard to convince myself she wasn't really dead. I was really upset about it and missing her. I'm not even going to speculate what this means about my feelings toward her but I see how it happened. Seeing Cheri the other day, those dumb kids on the bus, constantly having to go over to the SS office...it's all there. It just got really jumbled up in my head somehow in a bad way! I woke up from the nightmare at 5:15 and just lay in bed 'til 6.

This morning I saw one of my favorite female performers, Marlo Thomas, on WONDERAMA talking about dreams. A lot of references to dreams today.

I spent the afternoon on homework. Read two Holmes stories for Mystery class and wrote my report but I still need to type it up. Can't say too much about the new SONNY & CHER show this soon but it certainly was played up as an event!

Started snowing this afternoon. The dream made me nervous all day every time I thought of it even though the total absurdity of it all is now plainly obvious. Tonight when we went over to clean, I checked out the spot where it had happened in the dream and I got a cold chill.

NOTES: I have totally blocked this dream. No memory of it at all. "Cheri," as previously stated, was the girl who rejected me the year before. Was this a subconscious revenge thing? Who knows?

As for my homework that day, which required reviewing two Sherlock Holmes stories, here it is. As you can see, I got an "A."

Marlo Thomas's THAT GIRL is my all-time favorite sitcom. Has been since it was originally on. I think I just related to a more-or-less geeky writer falling for a ditzy brunette. (A similar British sitcom I was watching on PBS in 1976 was NO, HONESTLY.) I once wrote Marlo Thomas in care of Phil Donahue's show (her husband) and she actually wrote back twice!

The SONNY & CHER show that premiered tonight was the revival of the once popular variety show featuring the by this time divorced singing couple! Sonny had tried a solo show that was comedy-based. It wasn't bad but was missing something. Cher tried a solo show that was music based. Although initially popular, it was also missing something. The network made the estranged pair an offer they apparently couldn't refuse to team up again for the sake of the ratings. The problem was that their once hilarious repartee fell flat under the new circumstances. Sonny would eventually end up in Congress and Cher is currently finishing up a long run in Vegas I think.