Tag: students

The ‘Miles’ Dream

People were running in positions as though they sat in cars, following lanes marked with white lines and arrows. I did the same, jumping into the left-turn lane toward my home. The streets were narrow, lined with tall cement and brick buildings pink, yellow, white. The setting reminded me of Okinawa outside of Kadena Air Base’s main gate back in the 1980s.

Arriving home, a tall, old, cement building, I encountered friends. One needed to leave but his son’s baby sitter hadn’t arrived.

“I can take him,” I volunteered.

Ted, a Black friend, answered, “You sure? I don’t want to burden you.”

“Miles isn’t a burden.” Miles was the boy, a light-skinned Black child with a sweet, happy face, an oddly muscular body, and a head topped with soft curls. “We’ll have fun, won’t we, Miles?”

Miles agreed with a grin and words I didn’t understand, tottering over to show me something in his hand, which was empty.

“Okay, thanks.” Ted left.

Miles and I walked down the street to another building. People there seemed high or tipsy. Performers, I knew. Students. Singers, actors, musicians, artists.

Miles and I spent time chasing one another or playing hide and seek. People knew him more than they knew me. They started asking, where is his father? Why do you have him?

I explained that I was watching the boy for his father because his father had an appointment, but his mother was coming to pick Miles up.

“What was the father’s appointment?” I was asked. “Why isn’t he here?” They were disapproving, even though I’d already explained that the baby sitter had an emergency.

“He was counter-protesting a protest.”

Oh, that makes sense. That’s important, others agreed.

Miles disappeared from my watch. I panicked and searched for him. His father came in just as I found Miles. I said, “I was so worried that something had happened to him. I took my eyes off him for just a second and he was gone.”

His father, who was now another person, said, “I know what you mean. That happens to me all the time.”

0

The Four Buildings Dream

I was alternatively and seamlessly at different stages in my life, from teenager to middle age. I was going through four dull brown monolithic buildings. Almost featureless, their outside corners were hard right angles. They reminded me of huge parking garages, but they teemed with people.

As I went through them, I realized the buildings were familiar. Navigating them, getting lost, finding my way again, I realized that two were schools and one was retail stores, like a giant mall. Traversing the steps to different levels, finding my way through the buildings, I’d get lost and take wrong turns and circle back, searching for the right way to go. Doing this, I became more familiar with the layouts. Some was new information being learned or realized, while more came from dredging up memories. I realized that the fourth building were floors and rows of offices and cubicles, the corporate world.

Deciding I had a semblance of understanding about the arrangements, I began searching for familiar places and faces. I sometimes glimpsed people in the crowds who I thought I knew. The buildings were always so crowded and busy, and everyone was rushed and harried. Becoming firmer about my commitment and more convinced about where I wanted to go, I entered a long and tall but quiet and empty room.

A tall flight of black metal stairs was available in the room’s middle. I went up the stairs. Inside were three women. As I walked around, they asked, “Who are you?” Without letting me answer, one said, “Maybe you can help.”

As she said this, another said, “I’m not getting anywhere. Maybe he can try.”

I recognized the three women as RL blogging friends. I’d never met them but knew them online. They were at a workbench. Some electronic device was in pieces on it. “Here, come here,” one ordered. “You try. We’re supposed to use this to analyze but it’s not working. You try.”

I didn’t understand what they were talking about. I asked, “Analyze what?” I had an impression it was to locate guns being fired but then changed that idea to the device being something about interpreting people’s moods.

The one woman was talking fast about their efforts to use the device and putting it back together while she spoke. When she finished putting it together, she stopped talking and shoved it at me.

I protested and scoffed. “I have no idea what this is. What makes you think I can fix it?”

They urged me, “Just try.”

I bent down, figured out how to turn the thing on, and began messing with switches, dials, and buttons. A male voice was immediately heard.

“You did it,” the women said. “You fixed it.”

I was shaking my head, answering them, “I didn’t fix it, I didn’t do anything. I think you might have fixed it when you put it back together.”

They hugged and thanked me. I kept protesting that I hadn’t done anything and then left going back down the stairs.

Knowing where I was in relation to the buildings, I decided to visit my elementary and high schools. Taking different stairs, I left one building and entered another.

No, that wasn’t right. I reversed course and tried again. Coming down stairs, I entered a place I knew as my high school. I immediately spotted a number of people who’d worked for me during my life. “There you are,” one said. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this book. You said it was a good read. This is turgid, dull, and flat. I wanted to kill myself reading it.”

I laughed, pleased to see him, shaking his hand. “It is a good book but it might not be the book for you.” I began going on about different tastes and expectations. While I talked, another person came up. This was Howard, from “The Big Bang Theory”. He said, “I thought it was a good book. I enjoyed it, although I thought there were places where it needed help.”

We spoke for minutes more about the book and then I said, “I need to go,” and told them I’d see them later. I left that room and entered a fourth-grade room which I remembered. It was full of young students at desks. Several began asking, “Who’s he,” as I walked around the room and remembered it. Others began saying, “I know him.” A teacher who I didn’t know came up. “I know you,” she said, then shook my hand. She began telling me about all these things that I supposedly did. She insisted I was famous. I clapped back, “I think you’re confusing me with someone else.”

I left the room. The dream ended.

0

A Time Dream

First, one dream ended. All I remember of it was that Glenn Greenwald was mentioned. Then I discussed someone’s book. No details from that remain with me. In the end, I was trying to explain what I meant but couldn’t think of a specific word. I tried writing it on a white board and wrote in lower case letters in red, ‘threat’. Standing back, I said, “That’s not what I meant to write.”

But a new dreamisode began. I was studying with others. We were a small class, five, learning in an old farmhouse. The other students and I were talking and joking when we were supposed to be studying. I picked up the book to try again. The subject was macroeconomics and my interest in learning it was low.

The teacher, a young, short white man with a black beard, entered and asked if we were ready for our exam. Other students who were younger than us approached our farmhouse. My class watched them out the window. We discovered they’d taken the same course and had already finished the exam. Not only that, but they were ahead of us on lessons.

My classmates and I were dismayed. We were expected to read several chapters, amounting to hundreds of pages, in a few days and then pass an exam on it? I laughed. “I need more time,” I said to the instructor.

“How much time?” he asked.

I laughed again. “A few years.”

Dream end.

0

A Teaching Dream

First, I was required to fly an F-16 fighter jet. Flying the F-16 was just the beginning. I was told, not taught, how to do it, and then did it, no problem. Flying it was like walking with my arms extended to me. I delighted in it. Then the troubles began. I was immediately given a mission. It was at night, with bad weather. I rushed to leave, but oh, no, I forgot my oxygen mask and helmet. Couldn’t find them. Someone else, with derision, gave me another. There were a few other small problems but I put them aside and completed the mission.

After landing, I had a black backpack full of money. Well, other things were in there, but I had many stacks of bundled bills, too. I realized that I had to keep an eye on it. Others were present and trying to steal it. I kept catching them at it, so I didn’t lose any money.

Next, I was selected to teach others. We were being taught to teach something that required twelve steps. After we were given cursory instructions in a classroom, we were given a part to teach. My part of it was ‘supply chain logistics’. A class of new adult students were herded in. The class was about fifty. Someone else began teaching their module. The students were disruptive and the new instructor didn’t take control or even introduce himself. He did a poor job, which our teacher pointed out. I was chosen to go next. I began and realized that I didn’t have my notes or my laptop with my slides. No worries, I’d wing it. Two students, a tall male and female, got into an argument. They stood and walked around, shouting. I went to them and told them firmly to sit down. They did, and I resumed teaching. We were forced to move to the left side of the room because someone else needed the other side. People began going in and out of the classroom. I continued trying to teach. The students started interrupting; I restored order among the group and kept going. Half of the students left. The teacher left, and the other instructors left, but I kept going on, talking to them about the importance of communications, including feedback. As I taught them, I became more comfortable and confident, even though the interruptions grew and confusion swirled around the class. Other groups were meeting in the room, forcing me and my students to circle our desks. Weirdly, I wasn’t in the center of the desks, but walking around the outside, talking to the students. They kept trying to play stump the teacher but I wasn’t having it.

That’s when the dream ended. Funny, but in writing this, it seems very short, but it was lengthy and detailed dream, full of interactions with students and outsiders, and details that I used as examples, like types of aircraft, or making a shopping list and sending someone else to the store. A vey involved dream.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑