Memorable Dreams #3 (Mr. French Wants Me Dead)

The final recurrent bad dream from my childhood that I'm going to share involves two TV actors from, I guess, the early 1970s. Sebastian Cabot played Mr. French on the show Family Affair, which I loved to watch each week and later in reruns. Peter Graves played Jim Phelps on the original Mission: Impossible TV show. My older brother and sister liked it and I just caught portions of it from time to time.

In the dream - and like the Martin Luther King Jr. dream, I had this one many times - I would be alone in one of the bedrooms of our house in Burlington, NC. My parents were in the den down the hall. The Mission: Impossible guy would walk in and pull out a Star Trek styled "phaser" and shoot some sort of beam of light at my throat that made it impossible for me to scream for help. Then Mr. French would enter the room carrying a syringe with which he would give me some sort of shot that, I guess, would kill me. I always woke up before he gave me the shot.

Was it all rooted in fear of shots at an age where I got all my vaccinations? Why did I think lovable Mr. French from Family Affair wanted me dead? Who knows. But that dream is forever etched in my head.