Several people who wrote us with their dreams insist that sometimes the action gets so wild in there, they wish they could record their dreams and turn them into blockbuster movies. But we all know how it is. Dreams are slippery things and near impossible to control.

“I often have dreams that wake me up and (I) think DANG that would be a great book/movie,” writes Heidi Sawyer, of Lewiston. “Then I start thinking of all these ideas and plot twists as I try to fall back asleep. Then I wake up and boom – it’s either all gone or totally disjointed and wouldn’t make sense to anyone.”

We feel you, Heidi. While there are people who have trained or practiced enough to gain SOME control over their dreams – lucid dreaming, they call that – for most of us, trying to steer a dream one way or another is about as easy as bathing a cat.

There is one area man, however, who claims to have had some luck exerting control over his dreams. Retired Dixfield school teacher Ted Ionta sent us a fun letter describing his lifetime of dreams.

“I have always had vivid dreams, and when I’m having them,” Ionta wrote, “I know that they’re real and not just fancy thoughts during sleep. The money bag that fell off a Brink’s truck; the no-hitter I pitched against the Yankees; the bad guy I foiled in his attempt to do harm to others were all part of the myriad adventures I have had during my sleeping hours.

“None of those compare,” he continued, “to my ability to stretch my arms outward and will my body to leave the confines of earth, though, and (I) did this on a regular basis. I can still remember some of the things I did during those flying dreams: soaring over mountains, playing tag with birds, zig-zagging through skyscraper canyons, watching small-town America sleeping, rushing a foot or so along rivers, and many others. All of those things could be done if one had the ability to fly, and I did . . . until that ability disappeared. It just stopped. Imagine the letdown I experienced when I awoke mornings and realized that I hadn’t been flying the night before.

“Not to worry, though,” Ionta wrote. “Being a pragmatic person, I figured out that all I had to do was go to bed, get into a relaxing position and think flying thoughts over and over, and once I fell asleep, my flightless problem would be over. Alas, it has never worked – at least not yet. There is still tonight, though, and tomorrow night.”