dream [View all]

I haven't been to DU in a while, but I appreciate feeling I can come here and share from time to time. I am pretty engaged in my dream life, and you always have compelling things to say when I share my dreams here.

The recent dream that's sticking with me:

I was sitting in a classroom filled with strangers, except for the teacher, my boss, an amazing and complicated woman in her early eighties. She was administering a reading test, starting at the far side of the room. One by one, the adult students read a single page of text out loud. It was a brief piece of simple prose, in a large, clean font.

Each student had difficulty reading the page. He or she would struggle through it, and pass it to the next student who would struggle.

I was judging them. I knew that each had probably had cultural and economic barriers to learning to read, and for a few, English was likely a second language. But after the 5th or 6th student, I couldn't figure out why everyone hadn't been able to memorize the text.

I was bored and feeling out-of-place waiting for the page to reach me.

When it was my turn at last, my teacher/boss crumpled up the page that had been passed around the class and gave me a different page. It was black paper with tiny hand-written words in faint pastel chalk. The handwriting was terrible. The print was very small. All that I could clearly discern was that it wasn't the same prose that had been passed around.

I was disappointed that I didn't have the opportunity to show what a superior reader I was. I felt the situation was unfair.

My teacher/boss said, "What's wrong with you? Can't you read?"

I held the paper up to her and said, "This is impossible."

She said, "Read."

I struggled through it and sounded just as stupid as everyone else.