The ebullient emu of ennui; or, STOP WITH THE SCHOOL-DREAMS

Before I begin this post, I imagine that many of you are already thinking YOU DREAM ABOUT SCHOOL BECAUSE YOU WORK AT ONE. Yes, that's true. I do work at a school. But I worked at a hotel for the majority of my high school years and never once dreamed about the clouds of dead human skin that billow out of bedlinens, or of that time that I was randomly groped in a glass elevator by a drunk guest who thought my seventeen-year-old groin was "good for touchin'." I worked at a ghastly, dimly-lit campus eatery for one semester in college but never did I dream about having to scoop old mayonnaise out of a tub into a greasy, vomit-smelling garbage can, each horrid spurp sound killing my soul a little more. I also worked as a home-healthcare worker for a ninety-something woman, and I had to apply pungent unguent to her ulcerated ass-bedsores, and nary a time have I dreamed of that (AND BY ALL RIGHTS I SHOULD HAVE BY NOW). Let's get it straight: it's not about me working at a school, so shutthehellupandreadwhydon'tcha. 

In the past six months I have had several startlingly intense dreams about returning to school, and as they are increasing in both their frequency and in their bizarreness, I thought I would air my musty dreamscapes out in the hopes that months from now I won't have to endure a night filled with images of our old grade-school custodian filleting a dead monkfish while he is dressed like Carmen Miranda.  

My dreams have fallen into three fairly predictable, yet still vexing, categories: 1)"What do you mean, I have to go back to grade school?"; 2) "So You Think You Want To Get That Doctorate", and insidiously, 3) "You Are Going Back to School Only To Study Abroad Again But Then You Get Robbed of All Joy."

The first category of dream is the one that is most easily dismissed. The dream usually begins with me getting some sort of a letter stating that the grade school I had attended (which was private and Catholic) had not been accredited by the State of New Jersey when I finished, and therefore I never actually finished grade school. (As an aside: the amusing part of this is that my mother, when working at the school, was an important member of the accreditation team, and I know for certain that the school was fully licensed/accredited/perfumed by the incense-y approval of the Baby Jesus Himself). In my dreams, I and and the other twenty Class of 1994 graduates and our teachers were recalled from all corners of the US to re-attend my final year (eighth grade). We're told that we need to wear our uniforms again even though they are not the style/color of the uniforms now being worn at the school and even though, hello?, it was NINETEEN NINETY FOUR. Better still, we're told that we have to live like it is 1994; no cellphones or anything else that was invented/in common use after 1994 INCLUDING ALL BOOKS WRITTEN AFTER THAT TIME will have a place in the classroom. Oh, and tiny desks. Sweet mercy, the tiny desks. Frantic pleas and the proffering of diplomas showing completion of high school, Bachelor's, Master's and, in one case, a Doctorate, mean nothing to the monolithic State of New Jersey, and we're told to sit down, shut up, and open our Social Studies books to page 113 so that we can talk about how cities work. ("Sometimes people in economically barren portions of inner cities fall on hard times and have to provide hasty services behind 7-11 Dumpsters. This woman lost all of her fingernails to an STD that the CDC classifies as 'Black Death-adjacent.' Can you think of a civic policy that would help this chancre-ridden woman? Can you think of one that would contain her contagion?") 

The second category of dream causes me to awaken in my own chilled brine as it is the one that seems most plausible. I usually enter the dream as I am settling in with my new roommate in a soulless cinder-block apartment near to some gray, fictional campus. My mother is usually there, which would be quite a feat given that she passed away several years ago and therefore probably doesn't want to schlep plastic bags full of my clothes up to my room. My roommate is often a person from my childhood whom I've assigned a random age (20 years since I last saw you? OK: you're...uh...eighteen!) and he is often less than thrilled at the prospect of living with me. (I am quite dull.) Then, inevitably, there comes That Moment: it is as if for the first time I realize that I have given up a career, the man I love, and a home filled with delights like a personal library to instead eat ramen straight out of the electric kettle in a shabby student apartment decorated with Goodfellas posters and dartboards and strange wall stains that nobody can identify and smells about which nobody dares ask. Apparently in my dreams I firmly believe that pursuing another advanced degree means that I am utterly unable to work, that I am incapable of perpetuating love and that I am bereft of any semblance of dignity.

The third category of dreams is more recent, and involves me attempting to go back to school so that I may use an education as a SUPER CLEVER YOU GUYS ruse for international travel. Most often I am attempting to go back to Turkey, but when I succeed in getting there the country looks nothing at all like what I actually encountered ("Wait: Ankara doesn't have palm trees, does it? And why are there so many tattoo parlors and people selling bath salts on the street?") I find all of my friends and they have all forgotten me. I find all of the places I used to know and they are all gone. I usually end the dream eating some sort of savory meat on a stick while reclining in a field in the middle of the Eurasian steppe, wondering if my previous study abroad was a strange Truman Show episode. One recent dream in this genre involved me getting to Athens to study there and finding that the school I was to attend was a wealthy, white-Gentiles-only boarding school where I couldn't even afford to pay for the school beanie. (Yes, school beanies. Whatever). Oh, and Athens looked like Mexico. Yes, Sombrero-Man, I would like some souvlaki!

Ultimately, there are a number of completely rational reasons as to why I am continuing to dream about a return to education. I grew up strong alongside twenty amazing people, many of whom I miss and think of often. There really is a part of me that thinks I might have enough in me to complete a doctorate. I have never felt so alive as when I was studying abroad, and it is not a coincidence that in my dreams I am returning to places that have shaped my identity. I often feel as though my knowledge base, while broad, wouldn't even allow me to write a single, focused Wikipedia article. 

Of course, the real reason I have been dreaming like this likely has nothing to do with feelings of intense, sustained loss, fears of non/accomplishment, or a constant, burning desire to level my gaze on the Kocatepe Camii or the Athenian Acropolis again. 

Well, I have to go. My usual late-night snack of sour-cream and onion instant potatoes and two shots of Tanqueray gin, eaten/slammed while watching 1980s Peter Gabriel music videos, awaits. 

Until next time, I remain, 

Dom