When I was in college I had two recurring dreams. Both of them seemed so real that they frightened me during the night but were gone by daybreak. Each of them brought its own terror and I can't quite remember how they began or when they stopped.

The first dream was the usual dream of nakedness. There I was at this wonderful gala party. The girls were cute and the guys were cool. This dream takes place in the late 1950s or early 1960s. I was about 17 or 18 years old.

Everybody at this party was dressed beautifully. The girls wore hooped crinolines, bobby sox and saddle shoes. They were fashionable and sexy. The guys all had Elvis hair, slicked back and duck-tailed. The leather jackets with the metal studs completed the picture.

And now me!

I entered the party room wearing only a T-shirt, no boxer shorts or BVDs, nothing down south. As I walked through, I kept trying to pull down the skimpy T-shirt to cover myself but it didn't seem to work. I was naked and nothing I did could change that. Mortified and ashamed was the order of the day. It was a horrible experience and degrading for a teenager who didn't know anything about the world in which he lived.

My second dream took place in my college years at CCNY. Every night that I went to sleep I was taking a calculus mathematics course. The course had completely gotten away from me. I was the class dummy and I dreaded to be called on by the professor, whom I remember as a pretty nice guy. I was confounded by the mathematical language and I didn't understand the symbols. I was an American taking a course in Chinese language and symbols. I usually woke up in a sweat with my heart pounding. In reality, I passed calculus with a B minus.

As a 70-year-old, I still remember those two awful dreams. Tell me about your dreams. I'll bet you have some equally as terrifying. Don't be ashamed.