Lucid Teaching

Date: 4/13/2022

I am dreaming I got a new job as a teacher but I know the dream ends with being asked to volunteer rather than being paid, but decide to go along with it anyway because it's just a dream. I have been here before. I know the other characters even if they don't remember me. Like the controlling a-hole in the office with a pile of essays to mark in inter-office envelopes who says I am not getting any. He literally holds them to his chest, turns his back and walks away. But I know I am getting lots so I just laugh. In the staff room, older teachers say Hello. They don't remember me as they give out the same embittered advice: Watch out for cheaters and the violent or troubled kids. I volunteer to take them all, my favourites, after all, it's only a dream. One younger teacher, my age, takes out a red pack of smokes. I bummed some off her last time I was here, in September, before the heart attack. I could bum one again, but think she might be weary of bums. Plus, I shouldn't smoke. My family will smell it. I am kidnapped by the gangster family of a delinquent student but not worried because it's all part of the dream. We are taken to the bottom of a ship. There is a big window just above sea level and I can see the perfect, azure blue waves and scenic islands of the Mediterranean. I am tied up and lying down, but the scene is so beautiful. When we are released back to the school, I try to describe to the other kidnap victems what we experienced. "It was just... so...Blue." They laugh. I sneak an envelope of essays from the office dude's tray when he's not looking. Inside, there are different shaped, coloured papers with writing on them. I find the one that looks like an essay. It's on set design for a theater class. Shakespeare. I start reading but fall asleep. I try again. Some pages are blank. I remember a sheet called "teachers' notes" and look for it. It says the student should get a "D". But it is a pretty good essay.