D is for Daydreamers

Would it be wrong to assume that most quiet kids are daydreamers? While everyone else is playing kickball or foursquare, the shy little boy or girl hovers at the edge of the playground, his mind on a story he read or an alternate world he envisioned. Or maybe she's found herself in a nearby field, tying together dandelions into a crown; she's imagined herself a princess or a fairy.

As a child, my daydreams were generally tethered to reality. I relived a snippet of conversation, though my responses were always funnier and more intelligent in my head. Or I imagined a future conversation: banter came so easily in these hypothetical future conversations!

Lately, as an adult, my daydreams tend to focus on what I've written most recently. I'll replay a scene in my head and feel the same tension the characters feel. Sometimes, though, I'll drift to a conversation, real or imagined. I feel cozy, for lack of a better word, when the world is quiet except for my thoughts.

I wonder: Are loud kids daydreamers too? Can you be extroverted and still get lost in your thoughts?

New Term, New Excitement

A week or so ago, I had a school dream. It was the first day of class at the nursing school where I used to teach, and I was running around frantically trying to get ready. I was inside an unfamiliar building, not sure where to go, and I didn't have lesson plans or a text book. After hunting down someone to show me how to get to my classroom, I discovered that the stairwell was blocked. I climbed over it and woke before I saw my students.

I had a bit of anxiety deciding what piece to bring for the first meeting of my writing class, and I wonder if that had anything to do with my school dream. I've completed about a tenth of my novel (6500 of 65,000 words, ha!) but didn't want to bring an excerpt from the middle. I also thought about adapting a recent blog entry. In the end, though, I decided to bring a short piece I'd written in college about two sisters and their Wheel-of-Fortune-obsessed mother.

But I'm not going to use this term to focus on fiction. I'm finally going to write my "Nana stories" (most likely I'll post them here). I'm going to interview her about things, like enrolling in the army, moving to the Midwest, etc., and turn them into short narratives. I won't be challenging to her: I won't ask about subjects that would make either of us uncomfortable. I want them to be something she enjoys reading, as well as the women in my class.

Another School Dream this Morning

Instead of the rather corporate classroom, with its long rows of tables, white board in the front and windows in the back, we were in a traditional classroom with chairs that did not roll. I had the students move their chairs into a circle and asked them to stand on top of them.

Alas, I woke before I found out what happened. What was I going to ask the students to do once they were on the chairs? Would they have to share something? Would they answer a question? Would I stand on my own chair? Were we all going to jump off?

In the past seven or eight years, I've had countless "school dreams." While I've been in many different types of classrooms--Montessori preschool, traditional and parochial kindergarten and first grade, and for-profit college--my dreams about these schools are pretty similar: me, caring and interested, but feeling out of control.

This--leaving the classroom--might be harder than I'd thought.

Pictures of pictures

Remembering dreams is not a regular occurrence for me. Maybe I'll remember two in a week, or perhaps I'll remember two in a month. Usually they're mundane, but occasionally I'll have a long dream with a beginning, middle, and end. These ones are harder to figure out. Last fall I dreamt that it was the fourth of July and terrorists were striking all the buildings in the city.

Last night's dream reminds me of something out of a sitcom. Something really dramatic happens, and then the character suddenly wakes up; something's still amiss, and the main character wakes up again - he was having a dream within a dream. That's what I did last night. I was having a dream, and in the dream I woke up from it and thought, "Hmm." 

(If I were critiquing this post, I'd say it was vague and needed more specific details; but I've got lots of grading to do:)

I used to dream about smurfs and rainbows and (at age six) driving my mom's station wagon. Now I dream about dreaming and terrorists.