You know how you may hear a bell clanging in your dream and it turns out to be time to get up? Your alarm goes off and your dream-self works it into your dream. Environmental factors can affect your dream.
I don’t know about others, but I often dream about the inability to find a functional public toilet. The airport restroom is closed for cleaning, or the plumbing overflowed and the place is awash in sewage – that sort of thing. You have to go to the next terminal over and when you get there, it has problems too. When I have one of these dreams, it’s time to get up and go pee. Happens often. I think I’m actually able to will myself awake in this type dream.
Probably the most memorable environmental factor to have affected my dreaming was back when a motorcycle crash left me with three broken ribs and a pulverized clavicle. It hurt. A lot. And I had numerous dreams affected by it.
Probably the most memorable was set in WWII. I’d been captured by Nazis and was being held in a dungeon somewhere. My captors kicked my torso relentlessly asking me questions about troop strength and whatnot. I caved; I spilled the beans; I told them everything they wanted to know, it hurt so badly.
Shortly after I’d revealed all, I was rescued when a bunch of Brits lead by a David Niven-like character stormed the castle and found me curled up on the dungeon floor. I told Niven that I’d given up everything I knew. He said something like, “Don’t worry, old boy”, it’s nothing any of us wouldn’t have done in your place. Besides, we got all the Jerrys so no harm done.”
When I awoke, I was ashamed of having talked. Still am.
Probably the most bizarre broken-ribs related dream was the one with the circus convoy. Bear in mind that it was a motorcycle crash (caused by a pair of dogs running loose). In my dream, I was on my motorcycle heading down a decline known locally as “the cut” because it cuts through some high sandstone cliffs. As I traveled, I could see ahead a thick wire strung above the road across all three lanes (two up, one down). A circus convoy going in the opposite direction, including one vehicle with a giraffe protruding well above it, passed under the wire with room to spare but when I came upon the wire on my motorcycle, even though I ducked, I was swept from my seat and crashed to the ground.
Weird.