Meet Me Tonight in Dream Land
Funny story: it was pouring when I left church tonight (yesterday afternoon, since it's now after midnight). Being the silly girl that I am, I had no coat or umbrella or sleeves for that matter. So after the last song, I made a beeline for the nearest exit and run out in the rain to my lovely minivan Asswipe (pronounced "as-WEE-pay"). I wanted to get out of the parking lot ASAP because that place turns to gridlock about thirty seconds after Mass. I shove my key into the ignition and Y100 comes blasting out of my radio. I forgot I was listening to it on my way there. I was about to pull out of my space when a little old man, whose car was parked next to mine, walked in front of my van, looked at me, heard my music, and with a big smile on his face, pushed both his arms up and down in the air like he was raising the room. I almost died laughing. And then I almost got into anothing altercation with the vehicle because someone was going the wrong way down my parking lot aisle and it was a very tight squeeze to get around him. We're talking about an inch and a half of space on either side of me. Phew.
I need to write about my dream on Thursday night. I'm pretty famous for my strange dreams, so I'm not really surprised that I had one. But when I have weird dreams, I go back and try to analyze them. When I went to Florida for Thanksgiving almost two years ago, my aunt, uncle, grammy, and I all went for psychic readings. I was really disappointed with my psychic, but my aunt had one who told her a lot of things that have since come true. It always makes me laugh, my little old devoutly Catholic grammy believes in psychics.
Anyway, the part of my dream that stands out the most was when I was back in high school. I could tell it was my senior year and the building was the same, but my homeroom was in a different room. The halls were empty and I was running to get there on time because the bell was about to ring. I passed by my homeroom/calculus teacher and she told me to hurry up, but she was walking in the opposite direction. I stumbled into the room to find a weird group of people. Some of them were kids from homeroom, some were kids from government class.
For my fellow almuni, you'll know who I'm talking about by the following description. One of the gym teachers whose physical appearance can best be described by three adjectives (fat, bald, and Italian) was passing out papers to everyone. I slid into a desk behind Julie, one of my co-workers who didn't go to school with me. "What's going on?" I asked her. She had no clue.
Someone next to me told me it was our government/economics final. I raised my hand and got into a little argument with the teacher as I tried to convince him that I already passed that course the year before and had just finished up my freshman year of college. I didn't need to take a silly high school exam. But he told me I had to take it anyway.
Then someone appeared in the doorway and said that they needed help up in the office. If someone would volunteer, they would be given full credit for their exam and not have to take it. Julie and I shot our hands up and Julie got picked. I was pissed off, but I reminded myself that this would be a cakewalk. I kicked ass senior year (at least with government, economics was a whole different ball game) and in every college level political science course (I've had two, one of which was a slightly more in-depth version of my senior year course) and economics course, I've earned an A. So if I could ace this stuff at a pretty challenging university, retaking a high school test would be easy.
Hahaha.
I turned over my test and looked at the first question. And I looked at it. And I looked at it. And I looked at it some more. I stared at that thing for at least five minutes, completely puzzled. I had no clue. I could feel my heart start to pound in my chest, so I took a deep breath and went on to the next one. Again, I had no idea what the answer could possibly be. On every single question, I drew a complete blank.
After flipping through the whole test and not being able to answer any of the questions, I looked up at my classmates. While I was sitting stumped, they all seemed to be doing fine, or at least faking it pretty well. They were furiously writing and circling and drawing graphs. Their pages were turning and eventually, one by one, they started to hand in their papers. And I still had nothing.
I'm not really sure at what point I woke up. I have a lot of dreams where I'm late for something, or I should be in school, and I wake up terrified that I'm going to get in trouble because I wasn't in school. I also have a lot of dreams about flunking tests. So combine those two things and that's how I felt when I woke up and looked at my clock. I haven't had a dream about high school in a loooooooong time. What could all of that mean?
I'm always late for everything. I'm always running around. I'm always cutting things close. Running around the building at the beginning is something that happens a lot in my dream. Julie getting chosen over me has to do with work, I think. I get annoyed when my boss gives me the shitty jobs and lets the other girls in my department either sit around or do jobs that I enjoy a lot more. And there's nothing I can do about it.
I think every single Honors Government test I took senior year had a distinct pattern. The first question always killed me. KAR got a lot of complaints about her first questions. Sticking a real tough mulitple choice at the beginning always shot my confidence to hell and made the rest of the test harder to take. Had I been a little smarter, I would have learned by the third or fourth test that I should have taken them backways. So spending an obscene amount of time on one question doesn't surprise me. But the rest of the test? How is it possible for me to get a zero on a test about government and economics? Even worse, how is it that I was the WORST in the entire class?
I'm not really sure what that means to my subconscious. Could be that I have a fear of failing at my favorite subject. It does frighten me when I think about my future and wonder if I'm going to hit a huge academic roadblock in the next four years and get stopped cold in my tracks because I once thought I was good at government and then find out that I can't cut it, that I'm not as smart as I thought I was. Or maybe I'm worried that even if I graduate college summa cum laude, my degree(s) in political science and my good grades won't get me the kind of writing job that I want.
Whatever it meant, the only certainty is how I'm sure I felt: totally helpless. There was nothing I could do to get myself out of that situation except resign myself to failure. That's a depressing thought. But it all leads back to my brother's thesis that I am a control freak.
I need to get an analyst.
¤Mary¤
Quote of the Day: "And the shape of the shame, but it hangs around your name. For the first time you're afraid. And you take what they left and you choke on their success. But you're nothing anyway." ~ from the song Shape of Fear, performed by Jimmy Eat World
I need to write about my dream on Thursday night. I'm pretty famous for my strange dreams, so I'm not really surprised that I had one. But when I have weird dreams, I go back and try to analyze them. When I went to Florida for Thanksgiving almost two years ago, my aunt, uncle, grammy, and I all went for psychic readings. I was really disappointed with my psychic, but my aunt had one who told her a lot of things that have since come true. It always makes me laugh, my little old devoutly Catholic grammy believes in psychics.
Anyway, the part of my dream that stands out the most was when I was back in high school. I could tell it was my senior year and the building was the same, but my homeroom was in a different room. The halls were empty and I was running to get there on time because the bell was about to ring. I passed by my homeroom/calculus teacher and she told me to hurry up, but she was walking in the opposite direction. I stumbled into the room to find a weird group of people. Some of them were kids from homeroom, some were kids from government class.
For my fellow almuni, you'll know who I'm talking about by the following description. One of the gym teachers whose physical appearance can best be described by three adjectives (fat, bald, and Italian) was passing out papers to everyone. I slid into a desk behind Julie, one of my co-workers who didn't go to school with me. "What's going on?" I asked her. She had no clue.
Someone next to me told me it was our government/economics final. I raised my hand and got into a little argument with the teacher as I tried to convince him that I already passed that course the year before and had just finished up my freshman year of college. I didn't need to take a silly high school exam. But he told me I had to take it anyway.
Then someone appeared in the doorway and said that they needed help up in the office. If someone would volunteer, they would be given full credit for their exam and not have to take it. Julie and I shot our hands up and Julie got picked. I was pissed off, but I reminded myself that this would be a cakewalk. I kicked ass senior year (at least with government, economics was a whole different ball game) and in every college level political science course (I've had two, one of which was a slightly more in-depth version of my senior year course) and economics course, I've earned an A. So if I could ace this stuff at a pretty challenging university, retaking a high school test would be easy.
Hahaha.
I turned over my test and looked at the first question. And I looked at it. And I looked at it. And I looked at it some more. I stared at that thing for at least five minutes, completely puzzled. I had no clue. I could feel my heart start to pound in my chest, so I took a deep breath and went on to the next one. Again, I had no idea what the answer could possibly be. On every single question, I drew a complete blank.
After flipping through the whole test and not being able to answer any of the questions, I looked up at my classmates. While I was sitting stumped, they all seemed to be doing fine, or at least faking it pretty well. They were furiously writing and circling and drawing graphs. Their pages were turning and eventually, one by one, they started to hand in their papers. And I still had nothing.
I'm not really sure at what point I woke up. I have a lot of dreams where I'm late for something, or I should be in school, and I wake up terrified that I'm going to get in trouble because I wasn't in school. I also have a lot of dreams about flunking tests. So combine those two things and that's how I felt when I woke up and looked at my clock. I haven't had a dream about high school in a loooooooong time. What could all of that mean?
I'm always late for everything. I'm always running around. I'm always cutting things close. Running around the building at the beginning is something that happens a lot in my dream. Julie getting chosen over me has to do with work, I think. I get annoyed when my boss gives me the shitty jobs and lets the other girls in my department either sit around or do jobs that I enjoy a lot more. And there's nothing I can do about it.
I think every single Honors Government test I took senior year had a distinct pattern. The first question always killed me. KAR got a lot of complaints about her first questions. Sticking a real tough mulitple choice at the beginning always shot my confidence to hell and made the rest of the test harder to take. Had I been a little smarter, I would have learned by the third or fourth test that I should have taken them backways. So spending an obscene amount of time on one question doesn't surprise me. But the rest of the test? How is it possible for me to get a zero on a test about government and economics? Even worse, how is it that I was the WORST in the entire class?
I'm not really sure what that means to my subconscious. Could be that I have a fear of failing at my favorite subject. It does frighten me when I think about my future and wonder if I'm going to hit a huge academic roadblock in the next four years and get stopped cold in my tracks because I once thought I was good at government and then find out that I can't cut it, that I'm not as smart as I thought I was. Or maybe I'm worried that even if I graduate college summa cum laude, my degree(s) in political science and my good grades won't get me the kind of writing job that I want.
Whatever it meant, the only certainty is how I'm sure I felt: totally helpless. There was nothing I could do to get myself out of that situation except resign myself to failure. That's a depressing thought. But it all leads back to my brother's thesis that I am a control freak.
I need to get an analyst.
¤Mary¤
Quote of the Day: "And the shape of the shame, but it hangs around your name. For the first time you're afraid. And you take what they left and you choke on their success. But you're nothing anyway." ~ from the song Shape of Fear, performed by Jimmy Eat World