mr. clooney makes a reappearance

I've been lax lately about recording the dreams that I've remembered (which haven't been many), but I couldn't neglect this one, since I find repeats amusing [although, note to subconscious: group trips/group living arrangement repeats are no longer amusing!].

Anyway, my situation alternated in the dream between being an 8th-grader (??), being an older student (as in, I was my age or maybe even older and returning to college), and being on a trip with my husband. I switched back and forth between these situations as they seemed to make more or less sense within the context*. There was a lot of rather tiresome back-and-forths involving being in a younger classroom (a first-day-of-school atmosphere), finding my college classes, and making travel plans with my husband. I should add that at times I was in Paris and at times I was in New York.

Anyway, there was a lot of low-level stress and interaction with peers of various ages, but the noteworthy part of it was another conversation with George Clooney, in which he proved just as agreeable a conversationalist as my first [dream] encounter with him**. It started in the 8th-grade classroom, although I have absolutely no idea what he was doing there. He seemed slightly bemused, and I made a little small talk with him before asking, "Honestly, what is it like to be constantly assaulted everywhere you go by eager females? Doesn't it start to get annoying?" He seemed slightly amused but very deftly answered in a way that wouldn't get him in trouble with his female fan base. Then the situation shifted and I was in college. I turned around to talk to him again, but he was gone.

Other recent snippets that I remember:

1. I had gotten myself roped into knitting a rather complicated light blue lace scarf for a coworker. I had gotten about 8 inches of it done and was showing it to her when she said that she might really rather prefer a cowl. I was proposing various ways in which what I'd already done could be converted to a cowl format, trying to be nice while at the same time annoyed at her presumption since I didn't really want to knit something for her in the first place.
2. [I was living in a group situation when] while walking home one day, I was accosted by a developmentally disabled man. I couldn't find a way of avoiding him, although I didn't want to talk to him because I was afraid he would ask me for something. He did, although not what I expected: he wanted me to look over a book on jewelry making and do a (positive) review of it online. I tried to be noncommittal, but he wouldn't take no for an answer.
3. I had been on a semi-long visit somewhere (living in a group, of course), and was ready to go back, or maybe go on to another destination. I was traveling with my sister, and there was some miscommunication all around as to the time/place of departure. When one bit of confusion was cleared up, another one cropped up, and when we finally cleared up where and when we were supposed to be leaving, it was almost too late and our luggage was still with our hostess. She finally came running up with it, in a weird, construction-tunnel-like part of the airport, and we made it on the plane. Once on, though, we were informed that because of our lateness we had been relegated to "the upper deck". This turned out to be a small balcony in the back of the plane, overlooking the rest of the seated passengers. There were no seats on this balcony, and not even any railing to prevent us from falling on the heads of the passengers below during turbulence. I was really worried and annoyed that the airline*** would think this was acceptable, but finally discovered a few seatbelts coming out of the back wall. I figured that we could strap ourselves in with those and lounge on our luggage (which had stayed with us), and thus be reasonably safe. The other "upper deck" passengers didn't seem worried, and spread themselves out near the edge, looking very comfortable.
   

*I'm not sure this situation-switching has happened to me before, although surely it has.
**Although I can't deny his attractiveness, I feel I should specify that I am not, nor have I ever been, obsessed with Mr. Clooney.
***The airline was African, a detail I'm sure was due to my recent thrift-store purchase of a blanket from Kenya Airways.

cougar?!*

Oh boy. I toyed with not reporting this dream, but I suspect it will be more amusing seeing it written out--when I woke up this morning I was just tired and disgusted with my subconscious for the night's selection.

Anyway. I don't remember the first part of the dream, but I had learned that a boy who was a few years behind me in elementary school had a big crush on me. In real life he was probably 2 years behind me; in this dream, I was my actual age (although, I think, unmarried) but he was only about 15.

There was some church event that I was supposed to be going to, at my parents' church. Actually, it wasn't in the church, but in a room in the elementary school building--my old elementary school building, although it didn't look anything like my actual old school. I arrived with my mother, and for some reason I had it in my head that I needed to indulge this schoolboy crush by sitting somewhere near the boy and his friends. It turned out that my mother didn't need much maneuvering to get us to sit right in front of the row with him, his mother (!) and his friends. He started playing with my hair, which was a little annoying, but I told myself it was part and parcel of indulging his crush. Then my mother decided to move up a couple of rows, to my annoyance. I somehow found a logical and unobtrusive way to end up seated between him and his friends.

Being seated in the middle of a group of 15-year-olds really drove it home that there was a huge age gap. He seemed thrilled, and kept trying to paw me in both odd and inappropriate places, and I was getting annoyed and starting to feel like I had gone far enough with my charitable action and I should be able to hang it up now. The other boys seemed impressed that he had bagged an Older Woman, and I wondered if there had been some bet as to whether or not he would be able to get me to go out with him.

In addition to being hemmed in by youngsters and pawed at, the program was really boring. At one point I looked up at the ceiling and, inspired by the fact that I had spent my elementary-school years there, said, "I'm so glad I'm not in elementary school anymore". Then I realized I was speaking to an audience of entering high-school freshman. I tried to quickly throw in something about high school being much better and completely different from elementary school, so as not to damage their little egos. At the same time I felt very foolish about the not-in-elementary-school-anymore comment, wondering if--horrors--I might be trying to impress them and at the same time appear young enough to be in their age group. [Seriously, when you're over 30 you can be happy to be out of college, or even still happy to be out of adolescence--but out of elementary school? That's something you progress past at age 16 at the latest.]

By this time I was thoroughly disgusted with myself and the situation and wondering why I had even thought I needed to go on a pity date with a minor--and then I wondered, even more alarmed, if that technically made me a pedophile.

I got up to leave and tried to distract myself with some flyers at the entrance. One of them had a black background and looked like someone's idea of a sophisticated layout. It was a p.r.-ish flyer for a nebulous company/service headed by a girl I knew from college. I wasn't sure whether she was peddling publicity services or group travel services. [Yes, even when I'm not on a group trip, group travel still rears its ugly head in my dreams.] There were some stock-looking photos of young, attractive people happily on some kind of cruise, and a phrase that said, "Be seen naked...leaning into the naked sea", with emphasis on naked. I understood the leaning part to refer to the cruise, and to imply something like exultantly leaning off a ship railing a la Titanic, and I wondered who on earth she thought that was going to appeal to as advertising, other than exhibitionists. Then I re-read it and realized that it actually said, "Be seen in black dresses", which was also puzzling but in a different way. Now I was really freaked out about possibly being some kind of perverse maniac.

And now you see why I woke up in a bad mood.

*I now realize that this dream was probably inspired by someone telling me he had actually narrowly escaped a "cougar" when he was younger (cougar as in rapacious older woman, not as in feline).