I had a weird experience today. I was cleaning an exam room and I discovered a frog in the room. This is surprising but not surreal since it's been very wet outside and the frog population has exploded. I tried to catch the frog so I could release it outside. Somehow I lost track of it and in the process trying to find it again some member of the medical staff entered the room and asked me for something. I hit the button on my wireless earbud to stop the audio book I was listening to and ask him to repeat himself but the play back didn't stop. Feeling like a fool I tried hitting the button again but it still didn't work so I took the bud out of my ear. This didn't work either and I took the other ear bud out. I was confused because I was holding both ear buds but I only ever wear one at a time and I'd taken both buds off of my right ear. What's even worse was that I could still hear the audio book in my right ear. At that point I woke up in my bed from a nap with the same audio book playing in one ear. I successfully paused the playback at this point.
This is the first time that I can remember my audio feed coming in from the real world while I dreamed. I've had brief lucid dreams, false awakenings, and sleep paralysis but prior to this I was agnostic whether dreams could integrate detailed auditory input. It's a staple of dream sequences in fiction which should have been weak evidence of the phenomena but I'd mostly just treated it as a contrivance. The moments before I woke up were downright cinematic with the slowly mounting evidence of reality not behaving itself. That dawning realization where I've taken both ear buds off of the same side of my head and I'm still hearing them at full volume will stay with me.