Dreaming of the First Day of School

image–nostalgicradio.com

Last night’s anxiety dream involved a parent meeting on the morning of the first day of school.  It wasn’t even about my student, but for some reason, I decided to stay put and sit in with the parent and my principal, since I had stopped by in the  teacher’s classroom earlier to chat.  Best part was, I had deemed it important to bring with me an almost-empty 1.5 liter bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, which sat right in the middle of the table as this parent/teacher/me/wine conference got underway.  At a certain point, I decided that my input really wasn’t necessary, so I quietly excused myself with a graceful bowing out statement: “I’m just gonna leave.”

In the next scene of this nightmare, the principal popped her head in my classroom door, ostensibly to greet the new scholars who occupied my class.  She was not smiling.  Rather than going to meet her at the door, I waved from the other side of the classroom and directed the children to say good morning to Mrs. Beatemdown, in the dream wondering whether I MIGHT get some sort of a talking to about the little wine thing.

Thankfully, this was the point at which I awoke and fell to my knees in gratitude that it was not really happening.

The sad truth is that last night’s dream was neither the first nor last Stressmare that I’ve had or will enjoy as a result of my minefield of a job.  Truly, I am grateful to have a job, and I make every effort to do my best for my students.  Still, it seems that the crazy outweighs the sane with increasing frequency.  This may be why my internal dream time engineer gets so pumped to jump on the bandwagon and out-crazy reality.  Things start to overlap.

Dream or reality?  I am speaking privately to a ten-year-old.  My words: “Sweetie, it’s really not okay to take apart your pencil sharpener to get the blade out.  It’s really dangerous and you can get into a lot of trouble.” Child, smiling: “Yeah, I know.” As in, so, what’s the problem?

Dream or reality? Pair of walkie talkies goes missing one day in the classroom, charging cradles and all.  It is a small, self-contained class of kids with Emotional/Behavioral disorders–angry, violent kids.  We line up in the hall, next to the “cubbies” where they hang their backpacks and such.  Kid’s backpack starts to talk, in unmistakable walkie-talkie language.

I am going to just scoot out to the store to get some Preparation H to shrink the bags under my eyes. Then, let the games begin!