Classic ChuckDream...

Last night was one of those strange, fractured sleep nights. I was initially too tired to sleep (go figure....) but eventually fell asleep around 3:30 am. I must have dropped into a pretty deep sleep quickly, because I had this long dream, then later woke up and saw the clock read 4:15.

This is yet another in a long series of classic dream I would have, all revolving around school. I pretty much stopped having these about 10 years ago, but perhaps walking through the crowded halls for Fairport High School while delivering Nina to the nurse's office brought them back again. Here goes, at least what I remember:

I am in a class room taking a math class in Calculus. There are about 20 students in the room. The classroom is wide and three tiers of desks deep. I am in the middle row. The clock at the front of the classroom says it is 11:15.

I am clueless about the calculus. The teacher is talking about something, and although I for some reason have good grades in this class, I am feeling like I am a fake - that that was all just a trick of mine somehow, and in reality I don't know what I am doing. And impostor.

Furthermore, I can't remember my class schedule - I can't remember what over classes I have to go to next. In fact, the entire semester I have never really learned it, and there is a chance that there are courses that I am registered for that I am not showing up for because I forgot what period they were. And as a result failing in them too.

Since I can' t understand the math being taught, I am very restless in my chair. I squirm around and am generally uncomfortable. There are girls behind me and to my side - unlike "normal" for some reason they are flirting with me, and I have to ignore them because I don't what them to see me like this.

Then the teacher passes out a test for us to do. I am filled with dread - there is no way I can do this material. When we get it, for some reason the lights in the classroom go out, and there is not quite enough light to read. Everyone else just takes out their flashlights and starts to busily work on the test. I just sit there and get depressed.

Sometime here I then go outside of the classroom (taking my test with me) - I am in the basement, sitting in the hallway. Prisoners dressed in black are walking by me to go to the bathroom - they ignore me. Later I return to the classroom. The lights are on, everyone has handed in their tests, and they are going onto the next topic. The clock reads 12:45 pm - this seems to be a long class.

I take the teacher into a corner, start to cry and tell him that I don't know what to do, that I don't know the math. He is very kind, reminds me that I am a fine student, and to come back some other time to take the test. I open it briefly and then notice that the questions are really simple - all of this panic was for nothing.

For some reason at this point , while it still feels like math class, everyone folds up their chairs (they somehow have changed from desks to wooden folding chairs), turns around to face the back of the classroom, and sits on the floor. Somehow the topic has changed to photography.

Today the teacher is teaching how to develop color prints. This is a complicated process, but I have done it many times before, so am happy to hear that for once I will be ahead of the class.

Later on, the teacher demonstrates something having to do with colored dyes. He is teaching us how to do pysanky. The designs they are doing are very elementary, and I have done much more complex designs myself. I tell him this (privately) and he is glad to hear it.

That's where it ended for some reason. I remember being surprised when I was awake again and the clock said 4:15 - about one third the time the dream had felt.

My normal school dreams (and I am certainly not the only ones to have these, I think they are quite common) revolve around several central themes:

• (most common) - cannot remember my class schedule, or what classes I am taking. It is the beginning of a new semester, and I have lost my class sheet.
• It is the end of the term, when I suddenly realize that there is a class (almost always an English class, usually taught by a Mrs. Bickle, who is a high school teacher I had that resembles the Calvin and Hobbes kindergarten teacher) that I have to take a final exam in. I don't know the material, because I have forgotten I had this class all along, and had not attended for months.
• I can't either find my locker (they all look the same), or can't remember the locker combination.
• I somehow have succeeded in some class, but (don't ask me how) it is because somehow I have deceived the teacher - in reality I don't know what I am talking about.