BACK TO SCROOGE

This morning I have my first official "Return to School" nightmare.  I am in a school, not my school, more similar to my own elementary school.  The seventh grade has decided not to go to see the musical A Christmas Carol anymore (for real, this isn't the nightmare part), so in my dream, a low-budget version of the Dickens classic, complete with actors (some in swan wings for whatever reason), comes to the school.

I am stuck watching the performance, which is part of the nightmare.  I go into complete panic mode when I believe I may recognize Scrooge as an actor/teacher with whom I used to work, and by "work," I mean only one of us was really working between the two of us, and the slacker in our relationship was not I.

It is at this point, the point where Scrooge raises his head from his stooped over perch at a table (which has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual script) that I make the identity mistake.  I run from the room.  Down the hallway I go, skidding around corners, but I cannot escape the sound of the play booming and belching behind me.

I awaken expecting there to be thunder and lightning -- my dream certainly has enough noise in it.  No, though.  The house is quiet, the day dawning, and there is no noise in my room except for the hum of the air conditioner and the whir of the fan.  I shake the sleep out of my eyes and the dream out of my brain.

I'm down to ten days.  That's all.  Oh, don't be jealous; I do not get paid for any of this time off, and I have been working (albeit lightly) on curriculum.  No teacher truly takes the summer off.  Next week sometime I expect my class rosters to be posted, and I will begin the monotonous work of setting up my classroom on paper while I am supposed to be enjoying the last of my leisure time.

In the meantime, I have become Bob Cratchit, or maybe I'm Scrooge.  If these dreams think they're going to get the better of me, they are sadly mistaken.  However, I am extremely satisfied that my "Back to School" nightmare #1 is cleanly under my proverbial bah humbug belt.