“Does Wizkid speak French?” I asked my husband at 7:18 am on a sunny, Saturday morning. He was working night shift at the time, and was just coming to bed. Me, on the other hand, had been in dreamland, pondering the seemingly meaningless scenarios that came up in my subconscious.
He laughed, and asked why I was asking such a question at 7:18 am on a sunny, Saturday morning, first thing after opening my eyes. I went on to explain the dream I just had that prompted my inquiry:
I’m in a classroom; it’s a combination of the ones I was in during grade school and high school, the two of which were completely unrelated and unalike. My desk is in the back right corner, but for some reason the teacher is teaching from behind me. I look at my peers, and as the teacher speaks, it appears they’ve all fallen asleep. I’m wide awake, however, because I find the subject we’re learning rather interesting: French psalms from the Bible.
The teacher, noticing everyone has fallen asleep, asked if anyone is paying attention, triggering a flashback to the end of the movie Titanic. Being the goody two-shoes I apparently am now, I promptly raised my hand. “I’m still awake!” I profess. I take this opportunity to engage one-on-one with the teacher, and approach their desk for more in-depth questions on the subject.
I look at the psalm written on the board, and proceed to tell the teacher that I’ve heard this psalm before: Wizkid rapped it in one of his songs. “I’ve heard all of this” I declared, air-sweeping my hand over the beginning two-thirds of the piece, indicating that was the only part I knew. “I had no idea what he was saying, though.” I found my new discovery rather interesting; I never knew the song was a psalm. Just then, the bell rang; everyone woke up and it was time for the next class.
I left my classroom and walked into another classroom. This room felt oddly familiar, and my brain told me it was in fact the same room but also was a different room. (Perhaps my brain was scouting locations at the last minute and had to make it work). I, again, took my seat in the back right corner, and looked at the new teacher who was teaching in the front of the room. Whether this class was math or English I have no idea, but the blurred glance I got at the white board in front of the room indicated it was a cross between the two.
I was sat next to the wall, and the white board next to me clearly displayed the grades you could expect for what level of work you turned in. ‘5’ was an A+, ‘4’ was an A. ‘3’ was not explicitly stated, but I had the understanding it felt something like getting a C in real life.
I’m unsure if I planned it beforehand or if my dream brain just hatched this idea, but I decided I would mess with the kid in front of me. I could tell he wasn’t as invested in the class as I was, so I figured I could make him sweat for a second, purely for my own entertainment. I quickly hand-scanned my backpack for my assignment, and pulled it out with confidence. I was about 6 pages of wide-ruled loose leaf paper stapled together, with the math-English equations written fairly spaced out. I handed my paper to the young man in front of me, as he would add his on top and continue passing to the front for the teacher to collect by rows.
“I bet mine is at least a 4” I said casually. I noticed his, like most of my other classmates’ assignments, was only one page front and back. I saw the pang of panic enter his face, as he made the mental calculation that, if mine was a 4, he could only hope for a 3, at best. As he scanned the classroom, I could see him wonder if I had just gone above and beyond, or if he and the rest of our peers misunderstood the assignment. He said something about how he thinks mine is probably a 5 and his is a 4, reassuring himself of the situation.
“But the difference between and a 3 and a 4 though…” I made a face mimicking any dubious meme, and he promptly turned around and the dream moved on.
It was time to leave class (thank goodness I didn’t have to sit through that), and we all exited into a parking lot of a department store at a large strip mall, since apparently my school was inside something resembling a TJ Maxx. My classmates and I were chatting about the stores around us, and were discussing the fact that one store sold stuff to the next store, and that store sold stuff to the next store, pointing to each one as we covered them. This store then sold its stuff to the next store, and so on.
I scanned the place to see what other stores were around, as this was my first time in this particular dream location, and felt I would chime in with what I saw.
“And then everything ends up at Goodwill,” which I pointed to playfully. We all shared a laugh, then walked to our respective vehicles while sitcom music and a zoom out camera shot took us out of the scene.
As I heard my husband close the curtains, my entire dream enterprise came back to me instantly. I took a couple seconds to let everything sink in, wondering how much of that unconscious experience was based in fact. The quickest way to do that, my brain concluded, was to ask the only person in the room who was cognitively aware (my husband) a question about reality, so I could begin to unpack what I had just experienced: “Does Wizkid speak French?”
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