Please Interpret Teachbad’s Dream
I just had a crazy-ass dream and the details are fading fast so let me get this down…
I am walking around the grounds of Catholic University in Washington, DC. I stop and sit under a tree or on a bench; I don’t remember. I fall asleep and start to dream.
In my dream’s dream, I was in my classroom during first period, which is my planning period. I was working on something stupid or tedious or probably both. I got bored and decided to go for a walk. I was walking around the grounds of Catholic University. Walking and thinking; desperately not wanting to go back.
I stopped and sat down somewhere. Under a tree, on a bench; I don’t remember. I fall asleep and start to dream. I dream that I wake up and it’s five minutes until my second period starts, but I’m about 20 minutes away from school and have nothing planned for them at all.
Total panic. Heart racing.
I’m going to get in trouble for not being there and then again for having nothing planned. I start running back to school, my mind racing to think of a good story I can tell my dragon-lady principal. I’m about to call my friend Kate in her classroom to help me with a good story idea when I wake up…in the dream…
(Note: So the real me is still asleep, dreaming that he has just woken up from a dream. The dreaming me, in the dream, is awake. I think. OK?)
I’m disoriented and not sure if I’m dreaming or awake. Am I going back to school, or don’t I work there anymore? I’m about to call Kate again to help me shed some light on these things. I stop running and start to think. Slowly I begin to figure it out.
1) I’m awake, still on the grounds of Catholic University;
2) And most important, I don’t work at that school anymore
It was all a dream. In a matter of moments, clarity builds and then is eclipsed by a mind-body-orgasm-like experience that probably would have killed me in real life. I don’t work at that place anymore. An indescribable feeling of relief and joy and lightness; immortality. And I didn’t even want to fall asleep afterward.
Then it got weird and unrelated to teaching.
I was awake and not late for second period, but I still had to get home. So I start walking down streets that are sort of familiar because in real life I do live near Catholic University. As I’m walking, I notice I am wearing large boot-like slippers; maybe something like Uggs, but with lots of clasps and zippers. One of them has something in it, and it’s uncomfortable.
I sit down to take off the slipper. I reach in and pull a woman’s slipper out of my own. It is a small, very fancy slipper. More like a little shoe, maybe. It has a small heel and sort of like feathery-fuzzies on the front, open on both sides. I picture Marylin Monroe wearing this. Elegant and spotlessly clean and new.
As I’m sitting on the curb looking at it, I see its match sitting under some sort of drainpipe or wedged under a cement slab. It’s definitely a match; same slipper, same size, the other foot. But it’s all crappy. The feathery-fuzzies are caked in grime and nasty.
I don’t remember if I picked that one up, left the clean one there, or what. The slippers are gone.
(Note: Here’s the other thing. I don’t remember now which slipper was clean and which was dirty.)
And here comes my son and my dog. They’re walking with me now. We’re headed home. The dog doesn’t have a leash or a collar and runs across a busy street. Doesn’t get hit, but probably will when she runs back to us. Me and my son are running now and looking for a place to cross to go get the dog. A woman has walked up to the dog and we can see her looking for a collar and an owner. My son and I cross the street and reach the woman and the dog.
I grab the dog by the scruff of the neck and start trying to pull her toward home, where I really want to be right now. I’m moving pretty fast with the dog and my son falls behind. Me and the dog stop. When my son catches up, he doesn’t look the same. He is about 5 years younger; a perfect 4-year-old version of himself.
So I ask, matter of factly, “Why are you so small?”
He doesn’t respond directly but asks, “Why are my shoes so big?”
I say, “I don’t know.”
I ask, “Why are you wearing Alex’s jacket?”
He says, “I don’t know.”
(Note: Alex is one of my son’s best friend’s little brother and I have no idea what the fuck his jacket looks like.)
Then we just start walking, but more slowly because now he’s 4 instead of 9. Whatever.
Now it starts to break up…the real me is really starting to wake up…my son and the dog disappear…and just before I snap out of this, my daughter shows up.
I’m walking. I don’t know where I am anymore, but I haven’t made it home. She’s running behind me and I don’t see her. She catches me, turns me around, gives me a great big hug and says, “You’re supposed to be my knight in shining armor!”
End dream.
Does anybody have a full or partial interpretation of this dream? What sort of help should I be seeking?
Mr. Teachbad
So… I have a dream dictionary that I keep on hand for moments like this. It was put together by psychologists who studied dreams. Beyond that I don’t know how official it is, but usually you can piece together some underlying themes of a dream by looking up the images you remember, seeing which explanations ring true and ignoring the rest. Here are references for a couple of the images you mentioned. Hope it helps.
Shoes: Position in life, life situation, the condition of one’s chosen direction. The style and condition of the shoe also seem to be important in this.
Coat/Jacket: The self we use in public. Overcoats usually mean protectiveness, not giving any secrets away.
Roads and streets seem to have a general theme of direction or approach to life, and leaving your house to go out onto the road has to do with how others see you and being in public view. Running into the street means danger.
Dog: Easy expression of aspects of ourselves like aggression and love.
The rest of it… waking up and realizing you are supposed to be at school but have nothing planned, etc. sounds like the dream every teacher has in mid-August. Except for the relieved part at the end.
I honestly don’t know what your dream means.
I’ve never had a dream within a dream.
I think you might need to see an oneirocritic.
Sometimes, my dreams involve flying under my own power.
Occasionally, I’ve dreamed about being observed by a nasty school supervisor with an out of control class, and that I was caught without a lesson plan.
Thanks for giving me a new word. Oneirocritic: n; One who interprets dreams. (From the Greek oneirokritikos, of course.)
I had a feeling it was something to do with interpreting dreams.
In the words of the Immortal Stephen Fry, “It means you’re gay.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4htosoLsJI
I HIGHLY recommend this video. Thank you, Miss Friday.
There is an absolutely wonderful book titled “Water is Rising in the Classroom – True Terror Dreams of Teachers” collected by Elliot Lilien and illustrated by Laraine Armenti, published in 2004 by Martin and Lawrence Press, Groton, MA. (I have no financial connection to the book!)
It is what the title indicates – a collection of actual teachers’ terror dreams about teaching. The chapter titles are: “Overwhelmed”, “Discipline”, “Keeping Up”, “Harassed”, “Chaos” and “Expertise”. I kept this book on my bookshelf at school and lent it out regularly to colleagues, both new and veteran, and it was required reading for my student teachers. No one should feel they are all alone.
Most of these folks taught in the affluent suburbs of Boston and you will note it was written it the pre-NCLB, standardized test-crazed era. Imagine how much more intense the experience is now for urban teachers in the 30 year old TFA superintendent era.
Here’s my favorite:
“I’m sitting in the back row of the all-district training session prior to the first day of classes. A speaker is presenting to the group when I decide I could get something done while listening. I decide to shave my legs. As I slowly drag the razor over one leg the principal and superintendent approach me and say ‘You are doing an inappropriate thing.’ I pop out of my seat and say, ‘You don’t give me enough time to get anything done – just let me shave me legs.’”
I often have flying dreams, but the sensation is always that of swimming underwater. I assume this is because my mind doesn’t know how to replicate the sensation of flying under my own power in the dreamstate, but it does know the sensation of swimming underwater. So, in my flying dreams, I always have to push off something and then coast/glide to my next destination. But back to your dream: I have had more dreams about my worksplace since I’ve been teaching (3 years) than I ever had about any other job (15 years prior corporate lackey). I think the intensity of experience is so much higher in the classroom that it forces its way into dream processing.
Hi Mr. Dreambad,
I enjoy your blog.
I’m bored and, since you asked, I thought I’d interpret a bit of your dream. Enjoy.
I utilize the Freudian method of dream interpretation. According to his principles, it is utterly impossible to analyze a dream without the participation of the dreamer. To achieve anything approaching a complete analysis, it is necessary for the dreamer to contribute personal associations. It is for this reason that universal dream-dictionaries are futile. Certainly, many symbols are universal, and dreams use these universal symbols; however, dreams also use personal symbols and associations that no stranger could possibly know.
For this reason, any attempt to analyze your dream, Mr. Teachbad, could only hope, at best, to decipher the portions of the dream whose messages are veiled behind universal symbols.
That being said, I will speculate about the meaning or meanings of your dream, if you will take my analysis with the requisite grain of salt.
“I fall asleep and start to dream.” A dream within a dream. My interpretation of this is that your dream is touching upon content which is very painful. For this reason, the content cannot be admitted even into a regular dream. It must be framed within the context of a second layer of dreaming; an extra cushion of protection, if you will. If the content that is to be revealed becomes too painful, your mind has allowed itself the safety valve of “waking up” within the dream.
There is a second possible interpretation for the dream within the dream phenomenon. Bear in mind that psychic manifestations are usually determined by multiple causes; therefore, one explanation does not negate another. Overdetermination, Freud calls it.
The purpose of a dream is to fulfill a wish. With respect to this wish, the dream must seem real. The fantasy of bringing the wish to life must seem real in order to render the gratification. Now, what could make a dream seem more real than the experience of waking up? Awakening within a dream says to the mind: “I am awake; this is real; my wish has become reality.”
In the first part of your dream: You are planning, then you fall asleep, then you awaken to discover that you are late for your class; then you panic. You run, panicked. Then, you are spared your anxiety by waking up. You feel some disorientation, followed by orgasmic joy at realizing that you no longer work at the Catholic school.
This portion of the dream supports my theory that you dreamed within your dream to spare yourself from painful content that your mind foresaw emerging. Upon the appearance of the painful content, you awoke and were spared. Furthermore, the strong pain was replaced by a sense of pleasure of corresponding strength.
I surmise that one purpose of the painful dream (within your dream) was the attainment of intense pleasure that would be achieved when you awoke from it.
Now, it is normal to feel anxious about being late for a class and it is normal to feel happy when one recalls that one no longer works for an unpleasant employer. I do not know you personally, of course, but my opinion is that the exaggerated strength of your emotions does not match the circumstances to which they are attached. The emotions have been rent from ideas that are unrevealed to either of us and the emotions properly belong to these repressed ideas.
What your underlying memories and fantasies are, it would be impossible for me to guess.
You provided some clues:
Phrases such as “five minutes until my second period starts,” “20 minutes,” (20 days) “nothing planned” all refer to pregnancy. Typical male fears related to pregnancy involve unplanned pregnancy, and, conversely, impotence.
“I’m going to get in trouble for not being there and then again for having nothing planned.”
This seems to me to reference the fear of unplanned fatherhood and also paternal abandonment. This relates to topics of being a responsible, proving father; working, and so on.
The orgasmic joy you feel at understanding you are awake and no longer employed with the school; I presume this connects to personal memories of yours related to ideas of freedom from responsibility; freedom from the restraints of fatherhood and family life.
Polygamy versus monogamy? I assume Kate is not your wife.
Again, I’m just throwing some darts into the dark here.
“Then it got weird and unrelated to teaching.” When a dream becomes increasingly strange and fantastical, it indicates that a more intense, more painful memory is close to surfacing to consciousness. It is for this reason that more intense levels of distortion are required in order to conceal the uncomfortable truth.
“Walking down a familiar street” could refer to marital coitus.
“As I’m walking, I notice I am wearing large boot-like slippers…” This is a symbol of a condom. Again, we return to the topics of pregnancy; unwanted pregnancy; fatherhood;
responsibility, and so on.
“One of them has something in it, and it’s uncomfortable.” Condoms are uncomfortable, to be sure; or not as comfortable as the alternative.
“I reach in and pull a woman’s slipper out of my own.” It is a frequent and easy method of distortion used in the construction of dreams that there will be a reversal of objects. Here, your dream transcription, before distortion, should rightly read, “I reach in and pull my own slipper out of a woman’s.” The woman’s slipper is her genitals. This interpretation is reinforced by your subsequent descriptions of small heel (clitoris), and feathery-fuzzies on the front, open on both sides.
“Spotlessly clean and new.” This could reference virginity. “Spotting” is also a reference to menstruation.
I should mention here that when a person relates a dream, each word that is utilized in the narration is not capricious. Each and every utterance, every pause, every “Freudian-slip” lends some clue to the analysis.
The matching shoe serves as a symbolic dichotomy for the two contrary attitudes towards sex: clean and new versus used and dirty. It is telling that you cannot recall whether you picked up the dirty shoe. I suspect that in this portion of the dream which was forgotten that you actually did “choose” that shoe; meaning, you did succumb to the fantasy of having sexual relations with a girl who was not a virgin, or who, you in some way considered “dirty.” The definition depends upon your personal moral code.
Well, dream analysis can go on ad nauseum. The remembered portion of a dream in relation to the unconscious thoughts underlying the remembered dream is like the tip of an iceberg. I will discontinue the analysis of your dream at this point. I will only indicate the appearance of your children points towards the themes of family and responsibility to which I already alluded. And also, the word “jacket” has a dual meaning.
Holy crap…OK…I’d like everybody to please STOP interpreting my dream now.
Who knows?
Maybe you aren’t getting enough sleep.
I’ll take a shot.
The part about not being prepared is just classic anxiety over the pain you experienced working at CHEC. You’re wandering around a college campus because you wonder if you should get different training and pursue a different career path.
The fancy shoes represent Michelle Rhee (she was always teetering around on too high heels) and the discomfort you felt trying to maintain your integrity as an teacher under her insane rule in DCPS.
The part with your son and dog is two-fold. You are worried about not being employed right now and providing for your family, but on the other hand you don’t want to take a position that separates you from their lives and makes you miss out on their growing up. You “really want to be home right now” but you feel a sense of guilt over not working a day job and wonder will your children respect you if you’re not a breadwinner.
In short, you are still recovering from a really traumatic job. You are fine. Give yourself time. You rock and your kids are lucky to have you as their father. I know it’s easier advice to give than receive, but be kind to yourself. They love you and enjoy this time you have with them right now. Savor the minutes, your son was 4 just a blink ago and in another second he’ll be 13. It’s ok. Also, get to bed earlier.
OK…that’s better. I’m a good dad and not just trolling for dirty sex with ex-virgins who also don’t like condoms and that I’ll feel bad about later.
Nope, I don’t think you’re a perv.
Although we all feel a little dirty and abused after being walked all over by Michelle Rhee and her fancy, fancy shoes…
Sorry, I have no idea what your dream means. I had to take early retirement after teaching junior high for twenty years. Beginning from my last day at school for over two years I had a school dream EVERY NIGHT. They were always similar to yours in that class was starting and I had absolutely nothing prepared. Like you, I was so relieved to come to the realization that I didn’t have to teach anymore. I started to wonder if I should seek therapy because the dreams wouldn’t stop. Finally, they did. I just think it took that long to get it out of my system.