My coworker told me about a great dream he had last night (and I swear to god I am not making this up):

Apparently Sir Water Raleigh and Hulk Hogan were fighting for the hand of Queen Elizabeth I.

That's all he told me. I needed to hear no more. After you have a mental image of Sir Walter Raleigh and Hulk Hogan beating the snot out of each other, while Queen Elizabeth I sits off to the side watching and applauding softly, you've pretty much had it all.

This whole dream thing brings me to something I can bitch about, which is really why we're all here, now isn't it? You know what sucks? When you tell someone about this great dream you had, like the masterpiece mentioned above, and they come back with "Oh, yeah. I guess that's weird, but let me tell you about the dream that I had". Whereupon they launch into a description of the most mind-boggling, technicolor dreamscape, beyond your wildest imaginings: "Dinosaurs with chicken heads swimming through oceans of rice pudding, complete with an appearance by superstar prop comedian Carrot Top, who dropped by and gouged his own eyes out with a live salmon. In my dream, toast was used as money and the king of wombats ruled over all he surveyed from the silken walls of his castle made of Jamaican Allspice. Your hair and fingernails grew inward instead of outward, complicating haircuts and manicures to a ridiculous degree. Elvis was still alive and running a VCR Repair Shop...etc etc."

But I digress. The point is that at least half of the time, they're making it up. It's the pettiest form of one-upsmanship that there is: the "my dream is better than your dream" syndrome. This phenomenon is akin to the "lack-of-sleep braggadocio" which we have all been a party to at one time or another:

"Good gosh," sighs your coworker. "I only got five hours of sleep last night."

Sensing your opportunity for self-aggrandizement, you leap into the fray with a chilling tone "Five hours?" Then with a wistful look in your eyes, you say "I wish I could get five hours of sleep. I get more like two and a half" which is of course a complete lie as you were snoozing away, making icky sleep noises for a good 7 hours last night. This will continue until both parties reach a unit of time which both agree is too ridiculous to allow the charade to continue.