As some of you know, I’m currently involved in “planning” a 10-year high school “reunion” for my graduating class from East High School in Corning, NY.  I have to put both those words in quotes because the weekend events will go down as the most relaxed and laid-back reunion activities possible.  While I’m sure it will be a small group who makes the trip, tracking down classmates has been pretty fun.   We only had 140 in our graduating class so on a day like yesterday, when I got emails from 4 people, it’s no insignificant portion!

I would like to think that it’s all this high-school thought that led me down the nocturnal path to my harrowing dreams last night–or even Baboo’s power starting to take over–but I fear that I will never be able to shake the nightmarish experiences of reliving scenarios from high school.   The first part of last night’s experience involved being told by the chorus director that I had to sight-read a piano piece (in front of everyone) in order to be accepted into some special program for which I’d applied.  Regardless of the fact that this never happened (nor would it), it was a horrible experience.  What’s kinda funny is that I realized during the dream how much of a complainer and excuse-maker I am:  you should have heard all the reasons I was giving for why I needed more time to practice, how the piano itself was giving me problems, etc, etc.   So I resolve today to make fewer excuses in my daily life. 

I woke up after that first part and really had some problems going back to sleep.  When I finally did, I realized I was headed right back down a familiar path– the forgetting to do the math homework dream. I have this one often.  The kicker in this scenario was that I became aware of the fact I hadn’t done the math problems during Chorus (after the piano fiasco) and actually asked the director if I could skip a period to complete the math assignment.  You can imagine how well that went.

I am fully aware that it’s probably not normal still to be traumatized during sleep by imagined failures connected to high school.  I’ve certainly never had dreams of forgetting to write a paper in college!    As we prepare for the next generation, Seth and I have talked alot about behaviors and habits that we want to pass along to Baboo and those we want to try our hardest NOT to go beyond ourselves.  While I hope Baboo loves school and enjoys learning the way I did, I do hope that (s)he recognizes there are more important things than ceaseless concern about being perfect. 

PS to anyone with whom I went to school– Sorry for undoubtedly being annoying most of the time!!