Well for about 19 years now I have had a recurring nightmare that revolves around mathematics.
The first dream happens in the home that I was raised in, and I have lost my math book. Feeling totally anxious, I search and seach but to no avail. The book is gone and I have an exam that I cannot study for, obviously because I don't have the text book. I have had this dream every 1 or 2 years for 15 years now.
Sometimes it may change a little.
I will be running late for class only to get there and find out that we are having an exam and I am not prepared for it. Alas, I panic, sit for the exam, fail, and wake up feeling anxious.
This dream also changes slightly, and I will get to the class knowing that I have an exam; that I haven't prepared for...and the class has moved to another room and I can't find it!
So you can understand the level of anxiety that I experience when I begin classes in Algebra, in real life. Of course I have the same dream leading up to the midterm.
Of course I take the midterm and pass - no problems.
So last night I had another dream revolving around mathematics. But something has changed.
This time I am back in the home that I was raised in, and I am watching television. Then I am getting ready to go to a book sale to try and find some bargains. The next thing I know I am back in the loungeroom and my mother-in-law is with me. We have returned from the book sale and she hands me a gift. It is a book she found for me at the book sale.
I look down at the book and I see the math text book that I lost in the first nightmare I had 19 years ago. I just recall looking at her in shock. Then asking her "Did you know that this was the text book that I lost 19 years ago" She didn't really know what I was talking about.
But this morning I woke up with a sense of calm, that everything was going to be alright.
There is a great scene in the movie "Top Secret" where the hero has been captured by the bad guys and passes out during an interrogation. While unconscious, he has the classic student dream about the test and not having studied. Just as he's about to take the test, he wakes up, and says
"Thank God! I'm not in school! I'm only being tortured!"
Posted by: Drake the Lesser | February 07, 2005 at 04:52 PM