Last night I had lots of awful dreams. I wish there was a switch you could choose to click "on" or "off" depending on whether you were up for dreams on any particular night. I wasn't up for dreams last night.
In one of the dreams, I was in college. I had turned in my first creative writing assignment. It was a long story. Not my genre.
We were getting the papers back. I remember the professor was an older male. Not sure what that means. Leslie P sat to my right. All through my school years, from elementary through high school, Leslie P made the lives of us girls hell. We had to be best friends with Leslie because not being one of Leslie's best friends basically meant you were on the outside.
So I suffered from first through eleventh grade (I snuck out of school early) pretending to be one of Leslie's best friends.
I'm happy to report that I saw her two years ago at a reunion and the power to torture had been miraculously sucked out of her. Man. I wish I had realized in first grade that she'd ultimately turn out to be just another soccer mom. I would have told her where to go. I'm not scared of soccer moms.
So anyway, Leslie P got her paper back and it had a big fat C at the top. And lots of red ink. Maybe there was a plus or minus. It didn't matter, she got a C.
I was partly happy about her C and partly scared. The evil part of me reveled in her failure. But, of course, the much stronger insecure part of me wondered if I would do worse than my arch nemesis...in accordance with my low-esteem flavored fantasies of lesser-ness.
But my wondering was quite brief because the professor snuck up on my left side and placed a beautifully bound paper in my hands. I had to turn a few pages until I saw the grading.
He had taken some points off for failing to follow directions. Apparently, some "form" was supposed to be submitted along with the paper and I'd not submitted that form. Now that I think about it, perhaps the professor really represented an agent or publisher. They're pretty uptight when it comes to their stinking forms and formats and formulations, blah blah blah.
He had also subtracted points for some other failure of procedure - I can't recall now what it was.
But there was still a total numerical score in the 90's and a grade of A on the paper. Whew.
There was a shocking absence of red ink throughout the paper, but a lengthy comment at the end. I wish I had a photographic memory for use during dreams because I recall he was quite articulate in his analysis of my writing.
He summarized that the paper was excellently written. He came close to saying it was a work of genius. And then he lamented the paper for its basic superficial nature. He commented that I had chosen characters who were too simple. I had defaulted to dynamics that were too mundane. Basically, he said I had done a stupendous, flawless job of writing what he considered to be shit.
So here I sit today, pondering shit versus depth.
But you know, they say you should write what you know. Maybe what I know is just really shit. Simple and mundane.
I went to soulfuture.com for guidance in dream interpretation. I was looking for something that connected bad dreams to stromboli - which I had eaten earlier in the day. Perhaps when you eat a delicious stromboli smothered in thick, rich tomato sauce, you later dream about getting an A which is really an F in disguise.
I searched soulfuture.com for anything enabling me to dismiss the dream as meaningless.
The bad news is that soulfuture.com apparently takes dreams pretty seriously. So seriously, in fact, that they seem to make money off of those who need more than just guidance. Apparently, people pay for readings, counseling and other tutorials related to their nocturnal activities.
So I clearly couldn't just dismiss my dream.
But the good news is that my dream contained none of the signs or signals that soulfuture seems to consider significant.
There was no father, no floods, no waterfalls or any water for that matter. There was no flying, no masked men, no penises that I remember, and definitely no tadpoles.
So maybe it was just a dream. Maybe it meant nothing.
Or maybe I really am just better than Leslie P after all.