Tag: dream

Old, small, powerless, and useless

WEDNESDAY, 19 MARCH 2025

I dreamt last night that I had to stand in for a teacher at a high school. I found myself surrounded by hundreds of teenagers.

After a few minutes, I was scammed out of my cell phone. For some reason, I was also persuaded to take off my shoes. The shoes promptly disappeared.

Next thing I was walking around in my socks asking about my cell phone. I said that I needed to contact my family in South Africa, and how could I do that if I didn’t have my phone.

I was ignored, and every now and then laughed at by groups of teenagers standing around everywhere.

After a confusing hour of wandering around among what now felt like thousands of teenagers, someone helped me find my phone. All the phone numbers and WhatsApp messages and so on had been deleted.

I still couldn’t find my shoes.

Two young ladies who were responsible for the disappearance of my phone tried to explain that their lives were not easy either.

Not only did I have no sympathy for them, but I had a strong desire to wish them an early death. (Note that I did not consciously think these thoughts. Nevertheless, the full thought was that I wanted to wish the teenagers not just an early death, but a painful early death.)

I woke up with a headache, thinking: What a nightmare.

The feeling that pressed even after I had lifted my head from the pillow was that I was old, and small, and powerless, and useless.

(Roll the drums for a Grok-created image of a happy, smiling, bald, middle-aged man.)

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Finally room for tea bags

TUESDAY, 12 APRIL 2022

In the last few weeks, I had at least two dreams about boxes full of old papers and other rubbish I had collected over the years, which were still filling up rooms in an apartment I no longer even live in. An elderly Taiwanese lady appeared more than once as superintendent of the building or owner of the apartment. In one of the dreams all the boxes were wet – and there were many of them.

Then, last night, I dreamed again I was on my way. My wife was there too. The story was that we were on our way out of the country; she was going first, and I was to follow a day or two later – when I was done packing. Big difference with the hundred other times when I’ve dreamed about this theme was that all the most important stuff had already been packed. Even in my dream, I was wondering if this was really true. I looked around, and true as a fact, there were only pieces of paper on the floor, empty boxes that had been folded and stacked, and one or two pieces of clothing in a closet.

I woke up, fell asleep again, and the dream continued. Two posters that had to be left behind. I remembered that at one point I had thought it was worth the one or two dollars I paid for it at a Hospice store, but I knew I could walk away from it.

Best of all – and this was in the first dream – was my suitcase with which I would fly the next day. With not much left of value to pack, the suitcase was only half full! I moved some of the clothes to the side, and I was amazed at how much space there was left. I had tea bags in my hand, and I thought there was no doubt about it – there was definitely room.

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