She looked me right in the face and sighed a sigh that said more was coming.
I wasn’t really sure what could be next from this older woman in the cream-colored pantsuit that screamed administrator if you got close enough to identify her, but I knew something was going to follow that sigh.
-You understand what I had to do for someone in your position, now?
She had this short-bobbed haircut with a color that matched her outfit.
-I had to pull a lot of strings to get an upperclassman - a graduate, even - into classes like that.
Wait. I just left class and it seemed pretty OK. What do you mean “like that?”
-Yes, for someone with your…
She paused and shut her eyes, seemingly collecting herself and her thoughts with a sharp inhale that indicated she was going to say something, while not bad, was probably not going to be the most fun thing to hear. She quickly reopened her eyes, apparently having found her words.
-… fundamental dispractices.
And with that, she put her head down, signaling the end to our conversation, and went back to her work in this enormous open-room office the size of a big house with no walls, bouncing between desks and papers over here to desks and papers over there.
Uh, O-OK? I turned to walk away and consider what she had told me.
And then Tony Hawk walked by with an alabaster-colored backpack and a skateboard tucked underneath his arm. He nodded to me after we made eye contact. It was pretty obvious that I was staring him down, trying to figure out if that was indeed the same guy I used to idolize growing up just walking down the hallway.
It was.
-Hey, what’s up?
But before I could answer, I sprang awake. Now, wait just a second. I know Tony Hawk just woke me up with a casual greeting, but I was mad.
Had I just been insulted in my own dang dream? How does that even work? I understand getting embarrassed in a dream, you know, going to school without pants or something, or waking up forlorn after dreaming of a lost loved one, but getting insulted in a dream?
Like, imagine getting a cool new haircut and you’re super into it and some random person in your dream is all like “hey nice haircut” and you’re like “hey thanks!” and then they say “just kidding! It’s not good at all!” and you wake up immediately afterwards.
That’s what just happened. That’s a new one, right? That’s bonkers.
I think that woman was my advisor in this back-to-college scenario I had apparently REM’d myself into, which with school starting back and my nephew beginning college and moving into his dorm and sharing photos of it, made sense.
But what the heck are fundamental dispractices anyway? That’s not even a word! And I looked. The very moment after I woke up and angrily flung my legs over the side of the bed, I searched online for that word: dispractices. No results. And this word processor constantly gives it a red underline, so great job on focusing so hard on the right word to use, dream advisor!
When I first woke up, though, it’s all I could really think about. My fundamental dispractices. But also, like, yeah, well, what does she know anyway? Again, that’s not even a word and I learned long ago to not place all my trust into my college advisors. Why would I suddenly do that now? There was this one guy who advised me one semester and I basically got no credit for it, but it still counted towards my scholarship and forced me to go an extra semester which wasn’t covered.
I complained to the registrar, I think my parents did too (I mean, can you blame them?) and I was really happy when I found out he was removed from being an advisor after that.
I was also pretty happy when I found out that woman from the dream lost her position too. The nerve of her! To insult me in a dream? Especially in my own dream?!
Thanks for reading.