A Really, Really Weird Dream

I had a really weird dream last night and I want to write it down before I forget it. It’s a bit gross, so you might not want to read it while you’re eating. Nothing in it has any bearing on reality whatsoever.

I was walking up the staircase of a very large modern building. The building itself was a museum, perhaps a design museum, and was filled with a large number of people who were just wandering about. However, the building also housed a school of some sort and I was hurrying up the stairs, past the slow-moving museum visitors, because I had a project assigned. I didn’t know what the project was, but we were supposed to meet with the professor to find out. When I got to the room, it was an exhibition room, but there was a table obviously unrelated to the exhibition set up in the center. There were people in the room, but no one in the class and no professor. On the table were a variety of molds and little plastic cups filled with what appeared to be a modeling clay of sorts. At first, I thought perhaps I was early, but then it appeared to me that some little cups of the clay had already been used and I began to get anxiety that I was, in fact, late. But it was the right time, and some of the cups were still there. Nonetheless, I worried. I always seemed to be behind everyone at school, always late, always disorganized, always forgetting things. I picked up one of the cups and tried to press the “clay” into one of the molds. The clay crumbled in a funny way and it was obvious that it wasn’t supposed to be used in this manner.

I kept scanning the room for signs of the professor. Finally she appeared, a small, dark woman who was very neatly, severely, groomed. “No, no, no.” She said, seeing me fumble with the unknown substance. “You’re supposed to eat it. It is a newly developed green plastic. Instead of using an industrial process, it uses an organic one. Your body’s digestive process turns the raw materials into a usable plastic.”

“Eat it,” she commanded. So I did. “Come back when you’re ready to expel it,” she said and walked purposefully away leaving me a little stunned and puzzled and wanting to ask more questions.

“When I’m ready to expel it?” I thought to myself, “That could be a couple of hours.” I wondered how long the museum would be open and hoped the professor would still be around. What if she wasn’t? Why didn’t I ask that when I had a chance? Gosh, I was always messing everything up in school. I was certain that I’d manage to mess this up as well.

So I wandered around the museum. Finally, I felt as I was going to have a bowel movement, so I headed back to the table where the professor had set up the materials. The room was dark and there was no sign of the professor. I turned on the light and went back over to the table in the center. There was some information printed out on sheets of paper that I hadn’t noticed before. It described how a class of middle school students had made gallon water jugs out of the material. “Eew, gross,” I thought. Apparently, that was the point, to show that the material could be used for food purposes. At that moment, one of my classmates came in, a tall guy holding a teeny, pink, green and red martini glass on a tall stem. “Look what I made!” he said. He was always so enthusiastic but his work was so ugly.

“Have you seen Professor Manara?” I asked. (I don’t actually know anyone with this name. She is not a real person.)

“Not for a while, but she must be nearby somewhere,” he said and waltzed off with his martini glass.

I walked through the museum, past the tourists, and headed for the corridor where the professors had their offices. Professor Manara was not there, but there was another professor and I asked him if he had seen her. Indeed, she was in the cafe area. The students and the professors rarely went there and I couldn’t help thinking that she should have given us something like this and then gone someplace unexpected, but, as you know, students have no footing to complain about anything, and I headed quickly to the cafe area hoping I wasn’t going to have an emergency before finding Professor Manara.

I found the professor laughing convivially with a group of people I didn’t know. Finally, I managed to get her attention. “Why didn’t you say something! Come with me,” and with that she began walking back towards the exhibition hall. From beneath the table, she pulled out a plastic cup like the one doctors give you for samples and a small paper bag. “Here, go to a restroom and deposit it in this,” she said.

I was definitely beginning to feel a sense of urgency and was really hoping that there would be no line for the restroom. Luckily, there was none. Unfortunately the lock didn’t work. I guessed the paper bag was simply so we wouldn’t be walking around the museum carrying stool for everyone to see. Someone came in and startled me, and I missed catching the stool and it went into the toilet. I started crying because I’d already been kicked out of two design schools for incompetence and it all seemed so unfair.