NBF's DJ

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!