Morning of April 11, 1971. Sunday.

In my dream, my best friend Toby T and I enter the "Castle of Riddles" (which is seemingly modeled after my school and loosely related to “which classroom” I will go into on the second floor - though this changes and it then seems to be set in the basement near my dream’s ending). It actually seems to be part of some sort of (fictional, obviously) new game show for television that is being filmed at one point, though this idea remains more in the background. There were a few versions of this one - one did not have the “game show” atmosphere at all. One even seemed like a slow-motion replay and less vivid, watching disembodied from above the last scene, our bodies appearing somewhat distorted or “warped”. Toby and I are the only human characters present throughout.

We are each to choose between one of two doors - one of us can only choose one door for ourselves out of required mutual agreement - in other words, each door must be for only one “contestant”. One door supposedly leads to gold coins, the other to “death” (or implied doom or bad fortune). It seems rather strange that my best friend and I are supposedly agreeing to this, but such is the case and I do not seriously reflect on it that much.

Eventually, I pick the door on the left (numbered “one”) and Toby picks the door on the right (numbered “two”). As soon as I open the door, I find myself falling and sliding down a steep incline of gold coins (possibly an Uncle Scrooge comic book influence). I am very happy, as I look to my right and notice Toby is also sliding down the hill of gold coins at the same speed I am. We joyfully pick up coins as we are sliding and let them flow through our hands. I get the impression that they are golden American coins, though am not sure of the value. We continue to express our happiness as we slide. However, we both hear a loud roar (somewhat lion-like) and notice that, at the foot of the hill of gold coins, is a living golden dragon (that actually seems made of gold but is somehow organic at the same time - there is also an association with a furnace with a dragon-head-shaped door). It seems like we will die (thus to be eaten - though one version has the dragon’s head perpendicular to the direction we are sliding, thus is experienced and unresolved as ambiguous), but I wake up before I reach the open mouth, which in one version (even the original had at least one “reset”), turned out to be a large and stylish antique andiron, and in another version, a large school furnace (the setup actually seeming to take place at West Elementary in one version).

The King Midas story (studied at school) and another story (which I do not presently remember all the details of) influenced a few of my dreams. Even this dream was precognitive in the sense that I saw a comic book story with some of the same elements and names after my dream (which happened fairly often - though is more correctly called “postcognition” in cases when something has already been published). A Harvey comic book story seen later related to Casper the Friendly Ghost and involved characters trying to decide which of two doors to open and ending up as “mindless servants” when touching both doorknobs at the same time. I have recently been trying to find the actual Harvey comic book again or at least the story to better document and enhance this entry but have had no luck in finding it.

In my childhood, I was somewhat intimidated by a fifth grade teacher, Mr. F, as well as the "King Midas" story which I now despise - as it almost seems like a deliberate attempt to brainwash children into associating being wealthy with being “wrong” or “bad” (or automatically greedy). There was also one story about a treasure being “bad” or “cursed”; an annoying theme with a faux “moral” unworthy of a rational human being (especially as these days - one needs a fair amount of money just to survive). He was of the type that I am fairly certain should not have been in a teaching position at all because of his abusive and randomly violent nature (sometimes even knocking a desk over and incidentally hurting a child on his way down the aisle to “correct” a different student), the only teacher I had ever perceived as such.