Gym Uniform Disaster

Wondering about the title?  Bear with me on a few short tangents first, and I'll get to it by the end, I promise.  

Suffering from various forms of insomnia my entire life has created a slight obsession with sleep.  I spend a lot of time thinking about sleep, my nice warm bed, dreaming and anything else that is associated with sleep.  Do you dream?  Well, that’s a dumb question, actually, because everyone dreams.  I guess I should rather ask, do you remember your dreams?  I do.  I remember every dream I have, and I have some very, very messed up dreams.  Most of the time I can link at least parts of them back to things that happened or things that I saw or heard during my waking day.   Other times, they arise from something deeper.  I have several recurring themes in my dreams.  I don’t call them recurring dreams, because the details are never the same, but the main idea occurs again and again.   Here they are in no particular order:

• The unprepared for school dream. In this dream it is always the last day of a class that I am taking either for college or for some kind of work related training.  I find myself sitting in class with a final exam on my desk and no recollection of the entire semester.  Or, the rest of my classmates are all handing in 20 page term papers and I just now realized that I forgot to start mine!  Panic!  The entire dream then consists of me trying to figure out some way of preparing, either by attempting to speed read chapters or running to the nearest library to begin research on some undetermined topic.  I never reach the end of this dream.  I always wake up in the middle 

• The out of control driving dream.  I am driving some kind of vehicle and either the brakes, the steering or both goes out.   Try as I might, I can’t control the vehicle and I spin wildly out of control, through towns, over mountains, close to rivers and over cliffs.  I wake up just before I crash.

• The paralysis dream.   It will start out with me needing to move quickly for some reason – either I am late, or being chased, or there’s an emergency, etc.  I start off running, but as I go, my legs become increasingly heavy.  My pace slows to a walk, and eventually, I end up crawling, sometimes even pulling myself along the road with my arms, dragging my legs behind me.  I never reach my destination. 

• The college post office dream.  I am at Allegheny College, in the post office, standing in front of my mailbox and I cannot for the life of me remember what my combination is.  I go to the desk and they tell me that they have already given me the combination too many times.  I have reached my max and I am no longer allowed to request the information.  I stand there, helpless, unable to get my mail, as the rest of the campus crowds around me, unable to help me and frustrated by my blocking them from their own mailboxes. 

• The fighting with my mother dream.  I don’t usually even know why I am fighting with her,  but I always end up screaming (and I mean SCREAMING) at her.  I usually wake up angry at her for no good reason, until I’ve had my coffee and realize that it was all just a dream!

• And lastly, there's the gym uniform dream.  I’m somewhere in high school, taking gym class and I suddenly realize that I am missing part of my gym uniform, either the white socks or the sneakers.  It’s not usually the whole uniform, but rather just part of it, so I try to skim by undetected with a partial uniform violation, my heart racing the entire time.  

What do you think about those dreams?  I think they say that I have a terrific fear of being unprepared and/or out of control!  I’m not 100% certain about the inability to walk dream.  I guess that’s maybe a control thing too.  Thoughts?  Suggestions?  The mom dream, well, who better to take your anger out on than your mom, right?  (Sorry, Mom.  You get hell even in my dreams!)  

The best one though, in my opinion, is the high school gym uniform dream.  On the surface, you would think that was just another example of my phobia of being caught off guard.  It’s a little deeper than that, though.  Let me explain:

This part really happened:  In 7^th grade I had first period gym class.  For a 13 year old girl with big poofy bangs, 1^st period gym class is practically a death sentence.  Of course picture day in 7^th grade fell on a gym day.  Not wanting to be forever remembered in my junior high school yearbook as the girl with flat hair, I lied to my gym teacher and said that I forgot my uniform so that I didn’t have to participate in gym class.  Now, if you know me, you know that I am not a good liar.  I swear I have some kind of neon sign that flashes "FALSE" on my forehead when I'm not truthful, because I almost always get called on the carpet when I try to fake my way out of something.  In fact, I usually self-incriminate on purpose just to avoid the anxiety of being caught in a fib.  But having perfect yearbook hair that day was apparently more important to me than being caught in a lie.  I took the risk, and I lost.  As I was happily sitting on the bench watching the rest of those sucker girls play kickball in the gym, ruining their nicely poofed hair, I spotted something in my peripheral vision.  I turned my head and there was the gym teacher with my gym uniform – with my name on both the shirt and shorts – that she had fetched from my gym locker.  “What do you think this is?”  she smugly said.  “Um…my gym uniform”  I said, eyes to the ground, toes making neat circles around my feet.  "Put it on and join your classmates," she said.  It was the only time in my entire high school career that I was give detention for something that I actually did (once when I was a senior I forgot to get a slip signed by the dentist confirming my appointment. I was given detention.  Big whoop.  It was an easy 45 minutes to get my homework done).  To this day, 22 years later, I still dream about that damn gym uniform.  Thanks a bunch, Mrs.Bender.  You couldn't let a good girl slide just one time?  I bet I could dig up that ugly photo too.  Double scar.  Poor me!