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Sleeping to dream about...
We all dream every night, but on most nights I, at least, do not remember most of my dreams. Reason: I sleep well. I don't usually spend my nights tossing and turning or waking up often, and as a consequence I don't remember my dreams. So when I tell you I did remember a lot of my dreams last night, you should have some idea of why.
Let's just say that I hate motel beds and I hate motel pillows. I don't even like the air in motels (I swear it's had all the moisture sucked out of it, even with the AC off). I tossed, I turned, I woke up frequently... and I had weird dreams.
The worst of them followed a classic formula, with which I'm sure you are all familiar: the unprepared student. We've all been students, so probably we've all had this dream. Most of the last decade, if this achetype has invaded my dreamworld, it has usually been "the unprepared teacher," where I've got to teach but I don't seem to know what I'm supposed to teach (or sometimes even where or when). Last night, I was a student again. I got to class and discovered that I had a vocabulary quiz for which I had not studied. A part of my mind said "No sweat, I teach English, I have a great vocabulary..." but when I looked at the list, the words and their definitions largely seemed unfamiliar to me. I started cramming into my head as many words as I could and started to feel good about my chances again. Then I got the quiz, and it seemed to have nothing to do with anything I'd just studied. Some of the questions seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't seem to get any of them. Somehow I got distracted and the next thing I knew the impossibly hard quiz was gone. I searched desperately for it, looking all over the classroom but couldn't find it, and the teacher wouldn't give me another copy--I was devestated that I couldn't even get partial credit.
Of course, what I really should have been thinking was "What a BS test!" Dreams are like that, though, with a logic of their own. In another dream, I had my mother yelling at me for bad table ettiquette, even though I was trying very hard to do the right things. All of this I blame on an uncomfortable bed.