Halloween was yesterday. I think it was the first year ever that we did not open our doors to cute little trick or treaters. I turned off all of our lights in the house and even the front porch light. I went upstairs and snuggled in bed for the evening. My husband was at work and my daughter left for a very socially distanced evening with two friends. It was just me and the doggies. I pulled the covers up and had my remote in hand. I waited for the doorbell. Nothing. Being in the middle of a global pandemic has made things difficult and disappointing. I figured children would still ring the doorbell and desperately reach for candy. Nope. My doorbell did not ring. My outdoor camera picked up a few young children in costume stop and pause at my driveway and continue on. I know many parents were disappointed for their children and the annual candy fest. I know. I have been there. Just last spring my daughter missed prom and graduation. We are all experiencing disappointment. However disappointing it is and however fewer miniature snicker bars we receive this year, it is a pandemic. We bought a bag of mixed mini candy bars and between the three of us, we ate the entire bag in two days. Welcome to the season of extra pounds! At least we didn’t have to stop and look for razor blades in the candy!
Usually, this season of Fall and being thankful is not filled with back to school nightmares. That season has come and gone! This is definitely not the season of “back to school” nightmares. If you are a teacher, you know exactly what I mean. Several weeks leading up to returning back to school in August, the dreams start. I always share my dreams with my girlfriend who I work with. We always laugh and try to analyze together. Mine are typically the same every year. I am in a crowded and social classroom. I am trying to get my class started for the period. I am talking and even trying to shout out to the students in my usually very loud you can hear me from the end of the hallway voice, and it is gone. I can’t talk. I either can only talk in a low whisper or I just can’t talk at all. I am trying to get students to sit down and get their materials out and listen. I have lost them! It is total chaos, and I can’t get them to listen to me! It is such a frustrating dream and they are always present in August. They are an indicator that school is starting. I had my share a few months ago. I was getting ready to start a new adventure—online schooling. I was nervous and stressed and anxious about this new ride I was on. I had plenty of dreams to prove it. I found myself in numerous classrooms every night trying to speak and trying to gain control of rowdy eleven-year-olds in slumberland!
But now it is the start of November. I have already finished quarter one and we are on our way with quarter two steered right to winter break! I have talked to several customer service reps on the phone lately. They always start off with, “Oh, bless you. You are a teacher.” Or “Oh, thank you so much for what you are doing. It must me so hard. I can’t imagine being a teacher in this pandemic.” They are kind words, but they seem to be stirring up things in dreamland. I am dealing about parents who are grateful and parents who are frustrated. I am dealing with overwhelmed co-workers and looming legal deadlines. So, my annual August back to school dreams have surfaced once again and become November nightmares.
I woke up last week from a nightmare that left me anxious and sweaty! At first, I wasn’t sure if I was having a perimenopausal night sweat or something else. It was definitely something else. I was going back to work in my dream. My mother was driving me to work, but I had to stop at the local King Soopers to buy some lunch and snacks to take with me. It was as if I was lost in the grocery store. I was here and there and down this aisle and another. It was as if I was struggling to pick out items. Should I buy these double dark chocolate Milano cookies or should I go down the freezer aisle and locate an unappetizing Lean Cuisine? Maybe I should just pick out a premade salad. It was almost like I had no sense of time. As I finally walked out of the store, my mother had given up on me and left. No wonder! I was stuck in aisle nine debating cookies and calories! I was now late for work and did not have a ride. Now why I was not driving, I have no idea. But I called my daughter and she came and picked me up.
I was stressed in the passenger seat knowing I was late. It was my first day back to in-building work and I was late. We kept driving deeper into a nearby neighborhood that I knew was not my school district. My daughter kept reassuring me she was following the correct directions. Google navigator and Siri knew where she was going!
Once we arrived, we pulled up to what looked like a gym. There was a line of people holding gym bags and towels that wrapped around the building. I walked into a side door and into what looked like an indoor school gym. There was an older man that let me in. I asked him if I was in the right school district and building and he reassured me I was. I remember being perplexed and confused in my dream.
I walked through the gym and into another King Soopers! I was in another damn grocery store! In reality, I wasn’t spending any time in grocery stores with the pandemic. I was avoiding stores and doing everything online! Was I missing grocery shopping? I know that I was so not missing grocery shopping! I loathed grocery shopping on a Sunday afternoon before returning to work and enduring the week. Sure, picking out all of your items is great. It is the unloading them for checkout, getting them to the car, getting them out of the car when arriving home and then putting them away.
King Soopers in my dream was buzzing with adults and students. I could see my principal headed right to me. She was so relieved to see me and was not at all upset at my tardiness. She said my students were fine and taken care of down aisle five. She then looked at me and said, “Now go get on a register.” Things were becoming more and more confusing. I walked to several cash registers with the little light for whether you were open or not and running belts to convey all of the items including gallons of milk and toilet paper. It was bustling with business and my fellow teachers were on the registers. Since I was so late, I had missed the training. I remember reassuring everyone in my dream that it was okay. It had been well over twenty years since I had worked a cash register but it was okay. I smiled and nodded as people came my way. There was a young woman who was trying to help me in the moment of all of the chaos. She had turned my light at my register to blinking. Just like the self-checkouts at the stores when you need help with an item. My light was on, but customers kept coming to be line and placing items on my moving conveyer belt. I remember I continued to reassure them it was okay because I had not been on a register in two decades or more. They all looked at me with blank stares. It didn’t matter to them. They wanted to check out. I kept telling every person who came to me that I was closed. Didn’t they see my blinking light? Grocery items were coming my way on the belt and were piling about. In the midst of all of this, my face mask continued to fall off over and over. Everyone would point and look at me and tell me that I had to put my mask back on. What was I thinking they would tell me? It was complete chaos. It was a complete loss of control. I woke up and sat up straight breathing heavily. Thank goodness it was over.
Even though it was not my typical “I can’t speak” August dreams that I have before returning to school, it was still the same premise. Maybe my setting of King Soopers was because I feel like I am constantly going to pick up online groceries. Maybe my mask falling off is all about the controversy of mask-wearing in the real world. Maybe my lateness and lack of training is the reality of being in an online setting not quite knowing what I have been doing but it is okay, I have been teaching twenty years. Everything is going to continue coming at me on the conveyer belt, but it is okay. Maybe the fact that other people were driving me in my dream was because in reality I just don’t go anywhere. My day is dictated via online meetings and sessions. I am figuring out the online platform for teaching as I go just like the cash register and the blinky light. Maybe if teaching doesn’t work out, I can always work at the grocery store where all of us teachers will work after being burnt out from teaching and pushed out of this pandemic. However, if I don’t figure out the cash register and my blinking light, I am going to have a major back up on cash register five!