Back To School Nightmare

I know, it’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog. I moved all of my Red Sox/baseball stuff to here, and I’ve been spending all of my blogging time over there since. I never intended to abandon this one, I just haven’t seen or experienced much lately that has inspired me to blog about. Hopefully that will change as I had my first inspiration in a while this morning.

They say that your dreams have meaning and are usually related to something you may have been thinking about recently, or at least I think they do. Kyla started school yesterday and the thought of having to help her with all of that first grade homework has been terrifying to me. This may have been the inspiration for this dream.

Usually when I have the “back to school nightmare”, I’m back in high school and I’m not a teenager, I’m my adult self. This time, although I was my 40 year old adult self, I was not in high school, I found myself sitting at a desk in the front row of a 4th grade classroom. I’m not really sure why it was 4th grade, but that’s where I was.

The teacher told us to take out our math books and complete all the problems on a certain page. No problem I figured, it’s 4th grade math, and besides, all the answers are in the back of the book, how difficult can it be? Well, it becomes very difficult when you realize that you don’t have your book, and instead of just admitting this to the teacher, you decide to try to fake your way through it. It’s even more difficult when you’re attempting this feat while sitting in the front row, directly in front of the teacher’s desk.

Somehow I managed to do it. The teacher never moved from her desk and never questioned the fact that I did not have my math book in front of me as I spent a grueling 45 minutes sweating it out and scribbling on a piece of paper. As the end of class neared, everyone had to pass their work up to the front row. As I collected all the work in my row, I crumbled up my own “work” and put it in my pocket. I then went up to the teacher’s desk with the stack of everyone else’s work, handed it to her as the bell rang, and then booked it out of the classroom.

Phew! I had done it. I faked my way through the entire class, much like I had done throughout most of high school; which is probably the reason why I usually have these nightmares in the first place, as I’m subconsciously afraid that all of that faking is going to come back and bite me in the ass someday.

Anyway, I faked my way through the entire 45 minutes, fooled the teacher into believing I had done the work, and got out of there without her ever knowing the difference. It was almost too easy; maybe being a 40 year old 4th grader isn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it would be.