I don't usually write about my dreams, but I think this one reveals something interesting about me. Maybe just that I'm a supreme nerd.
In my dream, I was late to school (part high school, part college) after some early-morning shenanigans involving a circuitous drive and the world's largest iced mocha latte. My first class was English, and because I was late, I was at the back of the class. Not even in a chair, really, but stretched out on the floor at the top of a lecture hall.
I wasn't paying attention. At the front of the class, the teacher/professor was introducing some new vocabulary (I think my unconscious mind made up a new word so that my dream prof could make a horrible pun out of it) while I paged through an old notebook of mine. Short stories, notes, poems — even one that wasn't mine but that I found compelling enough to copy onto the page.
The teacher noticed my lack of attention and asked what I was doing.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I was just flipping through this old notebook."
The professor, intending to embarrass me, said, "If it's that interesting, why don't you read us all something?"
I wasn't horribly embarrassed. I turned page after page, looking for something good (and recognizing the text of some real-life short stories that have appeared on this blog), but realized that most of the works were only starters, incomplete.
So I said as much. "Most of these aren't even done."
"Not done," the professor said. "Finished." Then he gave me some lame line that badly illustrated his belief that done and finished meant two different things. Something along the lines of the old "Cakes are done; people are finished."
I couldn't really hear him, though, because my ears were filling up with the hum of anger. I prepared to tell him off, to cite usage by Dickens and Shakespeare and Hemingway, to yell him down for being such a pedantic, short-sighted, and thoughtless idiot.
But I woke up. It was 3:50 a.m. and my body was tense with the anger and frustration. I could only smile.
This is what wakes me up in the middle of the night. The emotional response at having my language choices questioned was strong enough that I was yanked into consciousness.
I am such a nerd.
And thank goodness for that.
In other news, you have only 4 days left to help me replace my stolen laptop and get back to some hardcore writing. Check out the premiums I'm offering in my FundAnything campaign at bit.ly/AndysLaptop.