I dream that it’s the last day of school, as usual it’s a Saturday and, as usual, I’m planning to quit before graduation. But why not hang out in the classroom for one more day?
Dear old philosophy teacher hands out exam sheets. Everybody is panicking except me, I haven’t studied but who cares? My friend M., worried about me, shows me her sheet, I copy it lazily making sure to add some mistakes.
The exam is divided in two parts, “boy” and “girl”. The teacher takes away the “boy” sheet as soon as it’s finished, to grade it. I tackle the “girl” sheet and I’m amazed to realize the questions are about web design and so I can answer most of them. The teacher brings back the first sheet, graded 80/100. He compliments me.
I’m a bit proud of myself now, I really want to finish the second sheet, but my alarm rings.
It’s raining as I walk home from high school. I’m wearing bell bottom jeansand (just like during my actual high school days!) the hems got all wet and muddy. Chatting along with me there’s my old classmate M., a bony girl with freckles and bovine eyes; she can’t believe we are already seniors and our school days are almost over, do I know what I’m gonna do next? Yes, I’m gonna apply to [IRL store I work at] and, I brag, I’ll have to work until 7:30 P.M. She says she’s gonna get off even later and I’m jealous, she’s always been smarter than me!
After lunch I get restless, I’m already late for my old philosophy teacher’s class, why do I always miss it? What if he never lets me graduate?! I go to pee on the balcony (it’s raining and everything is already wet so, I figure, why not?) and run off, but halfway to the school I once again remember that I’m an adult with a job and I don’t have to worry about graduating anymore.
I decide to go shopping with Gran instead. As usual, there’s too many people inside the supermarket and nobody is wearing a mask, I’m really concerned about Gran’s safety, so I drag her outside as it starts drizzling again. She’s carrying a plastic bag with a pink pullover inside, there is no place to store it though, so she hangs it from a branch that’s leafless and skeletal against the gray sky. I’m afraid somebody is gonna steal the bag and when she’s not looking I take it and bring it home, for safekeeping.
Didn’t have time to write down my dream this morning, being Easter and all, but I seem to recall.., something about going to school but realizing I forgot the notebook with my homework at home? And I have to go back for it. It was a military green notebook and it was meant for my philosophy teacher.
I’m grocery shopping with my cousin, we find an aisle in the supermarket stocked with every kind of face masks: they are expensive, truly outrageously expensive, common surgical masks cost 20 bucks apiece and there’s one single N95 mask, orange, that costs more than 600 bucks. Still, we’ve been looking everywhere and we really need those masks, I want to call my dad and ask what to do but once again I only have an old phone on me. I look for “home” on the contacts list and a stranger answers: he’s using my childhood landline number, I feel weirdly angry and protective.
We go to my cousin’s place and have fried fish and chicken for lunch. Then I go to school and my old philosophy teacher is there, but this time he’s teaching math, even better. He’s graded yesterday’s tests, on mine I only wrote down half of the answers and that half I copied. He’s really angry with me, he asks why, oh why am I so bad at math? I explain it’s because I’m smart, I’m so smart that in primary school I never learned how to study, everything was so easy. And now that math is difficult I cannot study to save my life. He says he doesn’t believe me.
I go back home and around the dinner table I explain the situation. I say I cannot even be bothered to learn my classes’ schedule. My mother is very worried, she says I’ll need to do something if I want to pass my finals. I say that hopefully this pandemic will be over soon, I’ll be back to work and won’t have to go to school ever again. Who cares about my finals anyway? Everyone is shocked and angry at me.*
My sister who’s also at the table sends me to fetch her boyfriend’s dog. I walk to town and start looking at every person walking with a dog, hoping to recognize her. I eventually find her, she doesn’t look at all like his real life dog but she’s limping just like her. She’s pooped all over herself and has to be rushed home to get washed, as we wait my sister and I walk into a stationary store. I hope to find stickers but only find pretty notebooks.
*I want to point out once again that I’m an adult, I’ve been out of school for 15 years and I definitely passed my finals back then. WHY DO I KEEP DREAMING ABOUT THIS.
I’m at a hair salon inside the mall; my hair is big and bushy, Hermione Granger style, and I desperately need a haircut. The place’s owner is a scrawny guy with an evil smirk, he shaves off a patch of hair in the back of my head, so it looks like I’m going bald, and then kicks me out. I’m desperate because I’ll have to shave everything off now.
I wake up in the morning to find my sister sitting on the living room floor, I’m enraged because she’s supposed to be at her own house, I tell her that she’s not gonna sleep in my room. She locks herself in the bathroom and I start banging on the door because I’m late for school. I don’t know if I went to school at all these past days, I can’t remember. Then I realize that’s because I went to work instead.
I arrive in my classroom and I’m greeting by the usual philosophy teacher, he announces we are going on a school trip. A moment later I’m sitting at lunch in a hotel dining room, so I wonder how I got there if I was at home with my sister in the morning. We are given free food samples, they come in small packages and one of them is pink and says “tuna for cats”.
We are brought bowls of veggie soup, I’m about to dig in mine when another girl opens one of her little packages and pours some truly nasty stuff in my bowl, so now I can’t eat anymore. As I wait for the others to finish I happen to fart; it’s just a little toot, but there’s no hiding it so I say “Sorry” out loud. One of the teachers says,
There are some people that never apologize, and that’s bad. But there are also people who apologize when it’s too late and the room already stinks.
We are shown a video taken from a security cam in the city of Venice, where we were apparently visiting that morning. I see myself on the screen as the chubby teen I used to be in high school, I’m reading a book and some bad guys steal it. I chase them down some tunnels, I cringe watching myself because I run so awkwardly.
Now we are led outside, where we see a beautiful pink sunset against the mountains. I take some pictures of the sky and of some local kids that are doing somersaults. A group of pigs are crossing a little fence, they are also pink and shiny and beautiful. They are led by a girl and her grandfather, who is a white haired detective Columbo. I take pictures of the pigs too and my teacher says I shouldn’t because it’s rude. Columbo says it’s all right, as long as I send him prints.
Dad and I are watching a movie. It’s very experimental, during the opening credits we see the landscape running away as if it was filmed from a car, from a window here and a tree there certain images or words pop up, conveying a dreamy, hopeful mood. Dad is impressed and asks me if I ever saw anything like it. I say no.
The movie begins properly and we are both taken aback to discover it’s not recent, but a vintage one with Sophia Loren speaking a passable English. The scene is set on my house’s balcony and neither of us question that.
My penpal C. has come to visit, but every time I turn my back or move to another room I forget what she looks like, I keep needing to go check again. Eventually I learn that she has short blonde hair and a bit of a plain face (nothing like IRL C.): she looks like a less attractive Saoirse Ronan, but I’m not that pretty either so I think we’re reasonably well-matched. I want to impress her, so I tell her my family has an acting tradition; why, even Sophia Loren filmed in this house! C. likes acting, I reason, hopefully she’ll want to marry me and take my genes, even though we’re both girls and that’s not how it works.
I’m late for school! As I look for my coat she protests out loud. I need to go to these classes, I explain, or I’ll have to repeat the year come September. Her mom is now in the room with us, sitting in an armchair and talking about boys, oblivious to what’s happening. C. gets really, really close and pins me to a wall, I feel her warm breath as she asks me,
“Remember what we did to that donut last year?”
I whisper yes, she asks if I’d like to do that again. “Yes,” I say trembling,”if you want to.” She’s about to kiss me, when I wake up.
I fall asleep again and dream the same dream. Now I’m running to get to school in time, I have to attend at least 70% of my classes and I’m not about to skip them this afternoon. When I arrive though, I realize with horror I’m not in my usual class with the boring philosophy professor, I went to work instead! Except work is a greenhouse miles from where I’m supposed to be, and what’s worse, I’m not wearing any shoes.
Two friends come to the rescue, they are two young men. I get in their car and one of them borrows me his shoes, because we are the same size, don’t I know? I congratulate myself, I’m so smart for remembering such a crucial detail, my narrative skills are on point even when I’m dreaming. We are showed a flashback where the friend buys me a pair of cool shoes, yellow and blue.
The car crosses a bridge, I notice racists graffiti on the walls. I look at the time, it’s almost six and I only have one hour left to not completely waste my evening. Unless… unless I was actually in a coma, in a tank full of red water and electric eels, and I never left the house. I missed school, I’ll never graduate now.
My sister is being insufferable as always, to shut her up I turn her into a cat. And not just any cat, but my very own black, grumpy kitten. I put this creature that is both my sister and my cat in her carrier (she bites me through the bars) and bring her to the vet.
I meet my friend F. there, he tells me it’s not much, but he put some free menstrual pads aside for me. I thank him warmly. As I’m sitting in the waiting room though, two men steal my pads. I confront them with all my wit and sarcasm and humiliate them into giving my pads back.
My breakfast toasts are wrong: instead of mozzarella, they are filled with slices of pale, unripe pumpkin . There’s also a bread roll on the table, it has peanut butter sticks inside; my brother grabs it and takes a bite, I yell because the sticks are actually cat food, but it’s too late, he has eaten the bread.
It’s time to walk to school! I’m running through a meadow because I’m late. On my way I meet two unnamed voice actors and their dog, I explain to them I’m going to “phone school“.* I finally reach the building and it’s not my IRL High School: it’s a ~technical school that I apparently decided to transfer to. Inside there is a massively high ceiling and a lot of stairs moving and intertwining, a bit like Hogwarts but much more airy and modern.
My class is in the upmost right corner, I hurry up the stairs and I’m very relieved to realize I’m only five minutes late. The teacher pops his head from the door, he’s my usual philosophy prof but there’s something different this time: he has a big smile, like he’s enjoying himself, for once. He gives me a pair of scissors and tasks me with cutting out the tags from his sweater. But wait, all my classmates are teenagers, I realize with a sudden jolt. I’m an adult in my 30s! How am I supposed to get along with them!?
Back home, I boot up The Sims. Since I have all the expansion packs, I find some oriental clothes and objects. I create two Sims, an old Chinese woman and her daughter, give them musical instruments, and listen to them playing in the snow for a while.
*My new job is indeed at a phone store, but of course I’d still be stuck in high school in some way.
A recurring dream: I’m at school, usually high school, and still have to graduate. It’s been years and I’m stuck here, failing my finals every time and having to go back. Often I’m sitting in my old philosophy teacher’s class, but in my dreams he teaches something even more horrid, like math or biology. I’m always unprepared, always didn’t study, always have skipped classes and don’t know how to catch up. Today’s dream is no different, I’m sitting at my desk but I don’t even know where on the textbook we’re at, I’m hoping and praying that the teacher won’t ask me questions. Suddenly a thought occurs to me: I’m starting my new job soon!* How can I go to school if I’m supposed to be at work every morning? Does this mean…? Dare I hope? I run to my mom and ask her if I’m allowed to quit school, at long last.
Another dream: I’m sitting in a little Victorian living room, I am Jo March from Little Women. I’m entertaining guests with my sisters, there’s two gentlemen for now but we’re waiting for a friend of Meg’s to come by, we’re told she’s a very sweet young lady. She arrives just as Beth is sitting at the piano singing an Ave Maria with her beautiful soprano voice. I think to myself it’s pretty cinematic and we’re gonna make a great impression. The guest enters the room and Amy –as played by a young Kirsten Dust– does a little double take and exclaims, “And who are you supposed to be?!” It’s very funny and endearing.
We all go out to the yard where the gentlemen strike a conversation with Netflix’s Lucifer. The two are gushing about something awful, like slave trade. Lucifer punishes us all by shrinking down the whole party to half our size. Baffled, Amy picks up a red leaf from the ground, it’s bigger than her hand now.
Meg and I leave to find a cure, accompanied by our butler, who’s a posh Brit with a white mustache. We are so small the three of us look like children walking down the street. We reach my IRL neighborhood and sneak in the local kindergarten, the rooms inside are covered wall to wall and floor to ceiling with blue porcelain tiles. We leave from the window, and there’s a cackle of hyenas waiting for us outside! We grab our batons and flame throwers and get ready for the fight.
DECADE DREAM JOURNAL 