NBF's DJ

Real-life situation: I've just found out my lifeboat dayjob is drying up (no more rent-paying work for me).

Recurring dream theme: I'm still working at my old regular-hours job in a hospital psychology department while doing tech writing on the side. (In real life, I left the hospital job 11 years ago and now pay my rent through tech writing for one client only while building up a resume, reel and contacts as an actor - which is scary but it's what I love to do.)

The dream: I've just come back from two weeks' vacation where I'm on set. I'm swimming from central Toronto back to the outlying area where the job was. I'm in a lake swimming close to shore, with a swimming coach calling out that these waves can be high - four feet high! - and to watch out for whales. Suddenly I feel a slimy, living presence pressing upward against me as I'm swimming. It seems to be a whale, but then I notice it's a manatee. Only I don't think of the word manatee - I think "cow-fish". This cow-fish follows me and rubs up against my leg like a cat.

The cow-fish follows me out of the lake. I climb up and find a towel hanging on a hook and dry myself off. I'm at the doorway to the hospital. I go in - discreetly, because I know I didn't tell Human Resources that I'd be off for two weeks - and try to find my office.

My office walls have been torn down and when I open the door, I'm outside in an enclosed courtyard. There are plants and carefully cultivated soil. I decide to go by the office of Joni, the receptionist there in the 80s, and try to find out what's going on.

On the way, Dan comes out of the men's washroom. I say hi to him. He stops me. "Navy," he says, "in this department, we have a policy concerning attendance. So far this year, you've been delinquent in attendance for 1057 days."

"What?" I answer. "No - look, I just got back - I'm looking for Joni. I can't deal with this at the moment. I'll talk to you about it later."

I find Joni, about to talk paperwork to the chief psychologist in the corner office. Meanwhile, I'm looking for my cats. Gonzo, the male cat, is in my office growling at the cow-fish, which now looks like a black foot-diameter cross between an angelfish and a terrier.

I grab a big tupperware container and go into the supply room to find Mimsie, the female, Gonzo's littermate. She's nowhere to be seen. Finally my sister Berta shows up and says, "I hope you don't mind - I substituted your big tupperware containers with these smaller ones. I didn't - you know - (shudder) - want you to - put a cat into something that food would be stored in later - you know?"

Ahhh, got it. I made another mistake.

A 12-year-old boy spots Mimsie in the supply room. "She's on top of the cow-fish!" he cries.

I put Mimsie into the small container, which has a bit of water in it. It's a tight squeeze, but she's only a five-month-old kitten. Then I go to talk to Joni. She's been crying. I ask her what's wrong and she says, "I'd only show these tears to you. I didn't get the kids."

I have no idea what she's talking about, but I sympathize and squeeze her arm. I offer any help I can. Then I tell her Dan just pretty much fired me. She smiles through her tears and says, "Great!! Now you can throw yourself full-time into what you've always wanted to do." We're hugging. She continues, "I mean, you're in your late 50s..."

"Late 40s," I correct her smilingly. I'll fight for those extra ten years!

I pass by Dan, who is sitting in one of the very informal meetings we're having, and he's shushing me. He starts talking about how I show up whenever I please and wear jeans and bring my cats to stay at work. "Aw, for God's sake, Dan," I retort, "Seth shows up carrying a bat and wearing a baseball cap! And Brianna with that piano in her office? Things have never been strictly protocol around here!!"

We get into a physical fight. I pull some martial arts moves on him. Someone pulls us away from each other.

I yell after him, "So you really are the Frank Burns of this Mash unit!!" Pause. "I said that to Seth 20 years ago during my first week!"

He's ignoring me. I go into my office to find Gonzo. By this time, Mimsie's head has swelled with water and she's turned into liquid. I quickly open the container, find her chest, and to CPR on her. The swelling in the head turns out to be a waterlogged white mouse that's stuck to her forehead. As soon as I remove the mouse, she stirs and awakens. She sees Gonzo, who is a full-grown cat, and she immediately grows to adult size.

My mom shows up from where she works in administration. I let her know what's going on. "I'm not in the mood to hear any whining," she says. "We have to go."

I'm at a revival meeting in a school auditorium, only it's a circular stadium. A man is preaching. I become aware that my attendance at high school classes consists of going to one room, reading a chapter in a textbook, and then going to another room and doing the same. (A frequent theme in my dreams.) The revival preacher is saying things with which I don't agree. A protest group enters through a door in the upper section of the quadrant to my left, and I can see them waving signs and chanting. I don't remember what they were chanting, but I know I agreed with them and started clapping. People in the auditorium don't like me because I clearly am on the side of the protesters. I'm supposed to be clapping and cheering at the preacher and being silent when the protestors enter. But that's not the way I honestly feel.

I speak out during the meeting and ask why they think it would be wrong to grow a new kidney for me from my own stem cells, especially after I've given one of mine to an ailing relative. They don't have an answer other than to tell me it's sinful and selfish for me to want one. Then when they're done ridiculing me to make an example of me, they start with a beautiful ballad-style song, sung by a lovely young-church-lady soprano with shorter, conservatively coiffed hair, about how important it is to be selfless and giving and to show the Lord's mercy, especially toward anyone who was different.

I get up and leave at that point, done with the hypocrisy. I go into the hall and realize I don't have my shoes. I see myself in a mirror as a beautiful older woman, but without shoes. I start to slide along the hallway and I suddenly have some kind of skate on. Then the floor becomes a kind of video game and there are images of electronic bricks getting in the way of my skates and trying to trip me up. Circumventing these bricks increases your score. I start skating expertly around the school - as if the hallways, which form a square, are a track - and one of the people watching says they'd love to see the blooper reel of when I started.

At this point the revival people, who are now ancient Roman rulers, come out and start a show. One of the exhibits is a man who has had a uterus implanted. He's four feet tall and they call him "Little Man". I open my big mouth and dare to ask why they'd told me a kidney implantation was impossible with me when they'd managed to implant an organ into this man that clearly didn't belong there. Then the uterus-man starts to skate too, as well as all the other spliced people, and they take over the track. I have to circumvent them while I'm skating.

I'm in school again, except I'm my real age, 47. None of the other students know this, though, and if the teachers know it they don't care, so I get no special treatment. As usual, I have trouble finding the classrooms. If I'm late for history class or haven't done my homework, which is usual, I skip the class. In fact, I skip history the whole semester. I usually skip gym, too, because it's first thing in the morning and, well, I'd rather be at Starbucks. (Who in the world expects a 47-year-old to perform well in a high school gym class anyway??) I get my report card, with As and Bs in everything except history and gym. History is a B based on the final exam, for which I just had to read the textbook, but it's marked down to a D because you lose one mark for every class missed or late, up to two grades down. As I'm reading this at home with my sister and parents present (and I'm still 47), I remark, "You know, I'm 47 and I already have a Master's degree. These marks don't even matter because the school board already has my marks from 1981. This year is just filler anyway until I can arrange to be in a university-level film production program. Why should I even worry about it?" Everyone agrees.

This is a recurring dream. History and gym are usually the subjects failed. Also, the term "filler" might have come from my having cooked a tofu fake-egg-salad sandwich for my mom's lunch yesterday and explained to her about tofu being best used as tasteless "filler", for texture and for a vegan to get a full protein serving with all the amino acids and much fewer calories. (She had been grossed out by the idea of tofu until I'd explained this. Tofu is disgusting, to vegans too, if you eat it unprepared. It absorbs the flavour of whatever you cook or marinate it in.)

But.... How did "filler" in that context translate over to "filler" for the high school year I'm usually repeating in my recurring dream? Those are two totally different meanings, and that's a big conceptual jump!