It took years of discipline, but at the age of 48, Bea Porteous, a librarian in Portland, Maine, had mastered an unusual talent. Bea said she could decide, each night before she went to sleep, what she would dream about in the night. If she wanted to dream about horses, then she would dream about horses, not cows, rabbits, or dogs. Even though she had worked on this for years, as soon as she told her best friend about this, Bea realized that it was a mistake. There’s really no way to prove that she had actually dreamed about what she had decided to dream about. Frustrated, Bea decided that in her dream she would discover how to end hunger and how to prevent nations from starting wars. This didn’t end her frustration, however, because even though she dreamed that she had figured out the answers, she could never remember what the answers were.
Tales