Evolution Of A Dream

Did I not mention in a recent post that I felt old and decrepit? Here's more proof:

I’ve always dreamt in the past. Not the present. Not the future. Just the past. “Home” is my parents house, “work” is the building we moved out of in 1991, and my parents look and act like they did twenty years ago.

For three decades I had a recurring nightmare of the past—the one where I stood in front of my high school locker totally clueless about the combination. Or where I walked into Biology and realized I hadn’t opened the book since the first day of school.

Sound familiar?

Only, with me there was a bit of a twist. See, in my recurring nightmare, after that fleeting uh-oh moment, I relaxed...because I remembered I was beyond high school, and that I was only standing in front of that locker or walking into that biology class because of some recently discovered administrative snafu (kinda like marriages that aren’t legit because the minister wasn’t legal). Yep, me and my whole graduating class had to go back and serve out one year—didn’t matter how old we were.

Usually, this realization hit when I recalled I had a Master’s Degree. As in…who cares about an old biology exam? I’ve got a Master’s Degree! From that point on, the nightmare turned into a dream where high school was all about the social, and nothing about the angst. (After all, teens worry most about the future, and I already know what the future holds!)

Anyway, so throughout my 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, I had that same dream…until last night. The new version had me standing around talking to friends, saying: “Hey, remember when we all had to go back and do one more year of high school? I wonder why we had to do that.”

See the difference?

Now I not only dream about the past. I dream about past dreams.

Weird.