I Don't Like Air Conditioners

This is actually a dream I had when I was around four years old, and still remember it.

Utterly alone, except for that noise.

I hated that noise. From room to room I ran, trying to escape it. The noise of a box air conditioner. The box air conditioners -- the ones that are mounted from windows, hanging out from them and secured by the closed window -- were everywhere. They were in every single room. Even the bathroom. I don't like air conditioners, I repeated aloud. Over and over, running from room to room. Every time I saw one, its droning hum invading my mind, ruining my thought. I don't like air conditioners.

Running to the center of the house, into the kitchen, I found a small place in a corner near the door that was as far away from the air conditioners as I could get. Beside me was a door. Where did that door lead, I thought? I don't remember... I felt drawn toward it. Maybe to a place with no air conditioners. I wanted to know what was behind it.

Before I reached the door, a pair of arms with gnarled hands came out from underneath the door -- somehow bigger than the small crack underneath -- and grabbed both my legs. I screamed in surprise and fear, and began yelling as the strong hands began to drag me underneath the door, through the tiny crack. I heard evil cackling, and the hum of machinery. Looking around in fear and panic, I saw an impossibly large room, filled with gears and pistons and cogs and other mechanical things. I was floating in midair just in front of the door, as the room was not only impossibly high and wide, but also deep. And a witch, somewhat like the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz, flew overhead. Not aboard a broom, but floated around, in long, grayish robes, her face twisted and purely evil. I began to fall into the room. Into a twisted, chaotic collection of gears.

Screaming and crying, I awoke in my mother's arms, in front of the television, in a rocking chair. I was somewhere around four years old at the time. I still remember that dream, vividly, over fifty years later.