A couple of days ago, in real life, I went to an interview for a part-time community college teaching position and it was decided that I would return the following week for an orientation. Afterwards, I planned to drive to Irvine for a movie and dinner with a friend. In my dream, I arrived for the orientation, pulling into the parking lot. For some reason, I had to get out of the car and unzip my pants. To my embarrassment, my interviewer appeared as I was getting back in the driver’s seat. He was welcoming me when he glanced down at my unzipped […] fly. – he pretended not to have noticed. When he left, I quickly tried to zip up my pants, but then another staff member […] came to my car door to welcome me. The parking lot was quickly filling with cars as teachers arrived for the meeting/orientation. We were all parked in a row along the curb, next to a forest […].
I followed the teaching staff as we all milled into the campus building. I went in through a side door, up a flight of stairs, and down a hallway. Even though the building in my dream looked nothing like the college building in real life, I thought, “Well, this looks familiar. This was the way I went for my interview.” – i.e. the path through the building that I took.
I was still feeling flustered, probably from the zipper incident, so I decided to backtrack down the hall to the bathroom to ready and compose myself. In the bathroom, I thought I’d look in the mirror and was shocked to find that I’d forgotten to put on my usual eye makeup that I wear in real life. My face did not look like my face, but was pudgy with squinty eyes and freckles. My hair was also a long, disheveled, and tangled mess. I thought angrily, “What the hell?” Back at the parking lot, I realized I’d forgotten the things I was planning to bring to Irvine later—I felt really aggravated and couldn’t remember how I had driven to the campus, thinking that it was as if I’d suddenly materialized there. This latest incident with the makeup upset me even more. “Let’s see what I’m wearing,” I thought, ’cause in real life, I’d planned on wearing my flowery green sleeveless to the orientation. In the dream, I looked in the bathroom mirror, turning to my side, and saw to my consternation that I was wearing my long-sleeved brown shirt. I went into a bathroom stall in a huff, hoping this was all just a dream.
At this point, I think I woke up a little, thinking relieved, “Oh, it was just a dream.” But then I fell asleep again. In my dream, I was lying in my bed, peering through squinted eyes, seeing my bedroom through a haze. My room looked exactly like it does in real life, except there was a pink Strawberry Shortcake balloon hovering at the foot of my bed. My friends, [Irene] and [Ellen], were also in my room, [Ellen] at my bedside. They had brought the balloon for me ’cause it was my birthday. But it didn’t make any sense to me because how could they have gotten into my house without me letting them in? I thought I must have been dreaming and kept trying to wake up, but I couldn’t. I got more and more frustrated. Then I thought maybe [Irene] and [Ellen] really were in my room, and I started groaning, trying to ask them to help me wake up, but they didn’t hear me. I thought, horrifically, that perhaps I’d somehow wound up in a coma and couldn’t wake up, though my friends and family were urging me to fight it and wake. I tried desperately with all my effort, but I couldn’t do it.
At one point, I dreamt that I’d gotten up from my bed. I opened my closet and realized I was still dreaming when I saw that my closet was only half-full with all my tank-tops missing. In real life, I have a giant yellow Tweety bird stuffed animal. In my dream, it was in my room but it looked uglier with a smushed-up face. I grabbed the giant Tweety and threw it on my desk so it was looking up at me. I was raging with frustration that I couldn’t wake. I thought, I bet if I grabbed the Tweety, I would feel it as though it were real, even though this is all just a dream. Angrily, I grabbed the Tweety’s face and it felt exactly like the plush it should have been. Somewhere through the anger, I felt amazed that my brain could conjure up such realistic detail. But I also felt angry that I couldn’t wake up. – I think I started punching the Tweety’s face.
Eventually, I woke when my alarm rang […].
. rese