stuff of nightmares >> from the pen of boot
She looked at her trembling hands, amazed that her worst nightmare had come true. Except, of course, that it hadn’t. Her worst nightmare was definitely the one about the little girl who kept running from the black and white world through to the red coloured shoe world and back again. That one was truly terrifying and she’d never understood why - and neither did she want to.
No, I guess it wasn’t her worst nightmare, but perhaps the manifestation of something that most of her life she wished fervently would never happen to her. Nightmares, when we talk of them in the casual sense are never what we mean by the literal sense. Ask someone what their worse nightmare is and it invariably will be something along the lines of “not being able to see” or “losing a loved one”. Something real. Something that may actually happen. Not, in fact, a nightmare. A deeply held fear or worry, yes. A dream arousing feelings of intense fear, horror, and distress, no.
I can imagine at this point that there are those of you thinking, “yes, but we also know that nightmare can mean a genuine concern”. The interesting point is that if I asked you what your worst nightmare was, you wouldn’t tell me “oh, the one with the giant carrot and pink, fluffy slippers”, you’d tell me something that you fear might truly happen. Of course, if you’re the sort that actually does spend their days worrying about being attacked by giant carrots, then you may have some other problems to deal with.
Language interests me, as you can tell, and its propensity to change and adapt is staggering. So, it’s all the more amazing that we haven’t come up with a better word for the dreaded fear of the nasty thing actually happening. Yes, we use nightmare in our every day speech, but we know that’s not what we mean.
There are other words, such as disquietude, which when we read them we know what they mean, but for everyday conversation, that’s too unwieldy. We could ask “What’s your worst fear?”, but that just doesn’t have the same kick as nightmare. It doesn’t strike the right chord.
So, when next asked “What’s your worst nightmare?” perhaps you should tell them. Perhaps, instead, you should ask them what they mean.
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