First Day of School

I often dream about high school or college. This dream went way back to elementary school - good times. Kane and I pulled up to my elementary school - Highland - in Hayward. We were full grown adults but we were there for the first day of school anyway. We weren't pedophiles or anything, we were enrolled just like everyone else. Dreams can be good that way.

We went to the school office to find out where we needed to go for class. There was no personnel and no signs; it was unclear what we were supposed to do. Apparently California budget cuts have hit my dream world too.

I finally found a laminated paper on the unstaffed office countertop showing a plan view of the entire school with different areas highlighted with different letters of the alphabet. The "S" area was near the 4th grade classrooms in the baseball (slash soccer, slash kickball) field; that's where I was supposed to gather with all the other kids who have last names starting with "S". Kane was supposed to go to the middle of the little kids' yard along with all the other kids whose first names start with "K".

Please don't begin to point out the inconsistency with the business of the first and last names, this dream is actually quite straightforward compared to my many others.

Anyway, so I walked through the basketball courts and over to my area of the field to join the other kids with "S" last names. There was a whole group of us, grades K through...me. I don't remember there being other adults there, but I didn't feel out of place either. Interesting.

I'm not sure what we were waiting for, but Vanessa Allen was in my group. Why would she be in my group with a last name starting with "A" - I have no idea. Not to mention the fact that I have not seen her for probably 12 or more years - again, let's not go there. She did go to Highland with me (in real life), though we were never really friends.

I used to play tetherball in elementary school because 1) it was awesome, and 2) I was gigantic for my age and kicked ass at tetherball. Vanessa was not very good, as I recall, since she was very short and generally small. In the dream we agreed to play against each other and I was almost chuckling about it since it was obvious she didn't stand a chance against me. Our relative sizes were about the same as in 5th grade in my dream.

We played tetherball and she won easily. She sent the ball flying hopelessly far over my head and I could not reach it as it wrapped snuggly around the pole many feet above me. I was astounded. But, I was resigned not to be a bad loser like we all were in elementary school and I told her she played a good game and got back in line.

I continued to watch more kids play tetherball, waiting for my turn. Vanessa eventually "roped" (touching the tetherball rope is a foul and an automatic loss), not remembering that that wasn't allowed. I reminded her, trying to be kind. Then another girl stepped in the "poison" zone - an area of the circle painted on the ground where neither player may step. We told her she was out too but she wasn't a good sport about it.

Nothing really happened (not terribly unlike a real first day at school) but I did get a good refresher course on my favorite childhood sport.