Very vivid dream of a bank robbery

I dream frequently and at times I wake up remembering a lot of of what it was that was in that dream. I know people who don't ever dream - or so they claim - they probably do dream. I also know people who dream but can remember only tiny fragments of the dream and this is the usual for me. However, every now and then I will wake up and remember the dream in its entirety or close to it.

I have recurring dreams but most of them do not involve a life of crime because aside from petty shit or minor vandalism that almost every teenager does, I've been one of those guys that doesn't think the consequences of prison are worth the risk in real life. This is something that makes my dream last night so unusual and during the entire thing I was filled with a feeling of dread about how the further I went down the road I was on, the worse it was going to be.

This one involved the robbing of a Bank of America, which is a bank I kind of hate anyway, so it wasn't all bad.

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There were 4 people involved in the heist: Two of them were people I was friends with in high school, both of whom I considered to be less than average intelligence and easy to lead. The other person was a college pal who I respect and is now a lawyer. All of these people were the same age as they were when I last saw them because as I've been told, you can not dream about a person that you have never seen. I guess that makes sense because you can't visualize someone that your brain has no idea what they look like.

We rushed the bank without disguises, which I realize is really stupid, and the only person that was armed was me. I had an M-16 and a semi-automatic handgun like a Glock. It wasn't necessary for me to pull these because the bank was closing and the tellers and manager believed us and started to get the cash for us right away.

We put the money into bags and then for some reason we sent two of the guys, the stupid ones, to go and stash the money while me and the more intelligent cohort stayed behind to manage the hostages. This doesn't make any sense that we wouldn't just all leave but hey, it was a dream.

Then things started to get weird. All of a sudden our group of hostages decided that they were going to escape and this is when I had to pull out my weaponry. The crowd within minutes did one of two things: They either realized that I didn't have what it took to shoot them, or they decided to join our crew. One of the people that decided to join us and hang out and wait for the aftermath was actually a cop. I couldn't match this cop's face to anyone that I have actually met in real life, but for some reason I trusted him so much that I didn't even tie him up or take his gun off of him. There was just something about our crew that inspired people to genuinely want to join us.

Things got weird when groups of people started to wander into the bank looking for a table because they wanted to get something to eat as the bank must have doubled as a restaurant.

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No matter what I told them these customers would not leave. Some of them stuck around even once I pulled a gun on them and told them this is a bank, and we are robbing it. It was at that point that I thought to myself that I couldn't allow them to leave because they would alert the authorities and bust us. Some of them became additional hostages and others also decided to join our crew.

By the time the cops got there I had a relative army of people that were prepared to die for our cause even though we didn't have a cause beyond stealing the money. Also, the two idiots that had left with the cash didn't seem to be coming back. When the police outside decided to rush the bank, the cop that had earlier joined our ranks was the first one to pull his gun and fire on his coworkers. This kept them at bay.

This was also the point in the dream that I decided that I was not going to surrender. I was going to die in a firefight rather than go to jail. At one point I told the hostages that they were free to go only to discover that none of them wanted to leave. They too were willing to stay and die rather than leave.

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Upon waking up I sat in my bed contemplating the hidden meaning behind this dream. In real life I have no desire to cause harm to almost anyone and I would never rob a bank because I am aware of the statistical impossibility that someone is going to get away with this. I have very limited experience with firearms and realize that I actually do not have what it takes to shoot someone in cold blood. I also have a very huge fear of ever being put in a cage for a long prison sentence - I guess I've seen enough documentaries about the "World's Toughest Prisons" to want to avoid that. These are just the obvious things though.

I wonder if there is a deeper meaning to this that relates to my own life in that I feel as though there is almost nothing I wouldn't do in order to not have to return to real society. I don't think I would rob a bank but I believe the bank is just a metaphor and its presence just relates to my complete inability to return to societal norms.

The addition of the "food-service" side of things probably just relates to all of the years I worked in the restaurant industry and the frustration that comes along with it. Restaurants are frequently featured in my dream-time entertainment presentations because it encompassed so much of my work life. As far as the people following me is concerned I think this could relate to my real life desire to do something great that other people want to follow - such as the bowling league that I have built here in Da Nang that the community is so enthusiastic about.

As far as my companions are concerned in the dream I think this was my brain reminding me that even though I sometimes get down on myself and the maze that has been my adult life, I am still better off than most of the people I grew up with.

Bank of America was probably only there because they are a terrible company that has burned a lot of people in their operations, including me.

If there are other psychological nuances there, I can't see what they could be. For the most part when people try to break down dreams to make them seem like something that they aren't presented as I think for the most part that this is a bunch of speculative hokum that people with higher degrees get paid a lot of money to pretend to know how to interpret.

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It was an entertaining dream, but one that was filled with dread from start to finish because I knew very early on in the heist that there was no way that I was going to get away with it and each additional illegal step that I took was only digging a deeper and deeper hole, until that hole got so deep that I knew that my own death was going to be the only eventuality. This is a dark finish to this saga, but was one I had resigned myself to in the dream. That's a bit scary I suppose.

Regardless, I quite enjoy dreaming and when they are not-so-great dreams like this one, I am always happy to wake up back in my bed with my dog snoring next to me rather than be in an eventual shootout where as is normal in my dreams, my guns wouldn't have worked anyway.

Had any interesting dreams lately? I'd like to hear about it if you have!