Friday, July 04, 2008

Dream entry #7: I dream in grudges

I lived in a huge dorm room, but I was me, now, not in college. I had a roommate—I think it might have been Becky. I snuggled under purple blankets and the orange glow of a streetlight filtered into my dorm room. I felt bliss. I love dreams about sleeping.

The college was so small that the entire thing was in one big building. Dorms, gymnasium, cafeteria—it was all there.

The girls’ chorus were having their big pre-party and were out carousing around the college building, pumping up for their season’s debut performance. Somehow (Becky), my dorm room door was unlocked and the parade of choir girls came squealing and screeching through my room in single file.

“Eww! Is that your left boob?” “Oh my gawd! What is wrong with your left boob?” “Eww, look at her left boob!” And so on, the left boob ad nauseam, being screeched at by girls in white toga sheets wearing balloons tied to their wrists.

“Nothing’s wrong with my left boob!” “What are you talking about?” “Get out of here!” “How did you get in?” “That is not my left boob!” Over and over until they were gone.

After I finished clutching my purple blankets around me in the sodium vapor light, I decided I was going on the mission of wrath and fury, stalking the entire campus in my boxer shorts and tank top until I found her. Her! I knew who it was leading the chorus. I knew who it was who led the girls through my room. I knew who it was that started shouting about my left boob…

Katrina Schurr. That is almost her real name. I left one letter out. That’s how much I still hold a grudge against her since eighth grade. Yeah. Me, Katrina Schurr, and eighth grade: you heard me.

Katrina was part of the cool girl clique in real life, and therefore had free reign to make my life a living hell. Here she is, in Dream Entry #7, doing it again! “Ew, is that your left boob?”

Dream Christine was taking no more abuse from Dream Katrina Schurr. I launched from my over-sized dorm room and started running down the halls of the college trying to catch up to the chorus girls. I could hear them, and I knew I was so close to the end of the train. I knew if I could just get close enough to the toga-girls, I could get my revenge and humiliate Katrina Schurr in retaliation.

But I couldn’t do it. Everywhere I ran, they had just been. And their voices kept getting farther and farther away down the industrial blue corridors. How were they getting ahead of me when I pumped my legs like pistons and couldn’t catch even the stragglers?

The final destination of the pre-program chorus blowout was the auditorium every year. I chased down the halls, knowing they’d end up on stage, drunk and singing silly pop songs for a lark.

I passed through the men’s dorm area to get to the auditorium, and, finally, I was there. I would exact my revenge on Katrina Schurr. I went to a side entrance near a seating aisle, and I peeped in. Now was my chance. I would walk into the center of the seats unnoticed by the giggly girls and shout out Katrina Schurr’s name.

I would. But then as I stood there at the crack in the door, watching them, listening to them, I realized it didn’t matter. Who cares if Katrina Schurr helped make second through eighth grade hell? Who cares if her cronies spread some weird rumor about my left boob, which would be visibly not true? I realized I didn’t. I realized I was tired, and I had run and exhausted myself, and I realized I was angry, but not angry enough to yell back at Katrina Schurr. I realized I wasted all that physical energy chasing something that would never really happen: I’d never truly have revenge on Katrina. And I didn’t care.

I had to walk back through the men’s dorm halls in my boxer shorts and tank top though. The dorm official stopped me at the front desk, “You know, you aren’t supposed to be here.”

I said: “I know, they’re huge, and I’m not wearing a bra. Go ahead and look and get it over with.” I turned and walked away, back to the room with purple blankets.

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