Classroom Dreams

“Hmmm….”

  I woke up with a sharp pain in my side and turned around to locate the cause. My friend was sitting by my side and was resolutely staring elsewhere; but I knew it was he who poked me with his pen, for  I grew accustomed to it by then. But I was not angry at him for disturbing me, as he did it for a cause.

“She saw you…again”,he hissed and resumed his blatant staring.

    Let me explain what this is about. That was a fine Monday morning and I’m inside the ever boring English class, in my school. The teacher was Mrs. Bent, having a stern face and a disproportionate bloated body. The lessons were always boring as hell, and the teacher’s seemingly grotesque figure dipped the attentiveness of the students even more.  That day the atmosphere in the class was even more soporific than usual, as the teacher droned on about a poem on ‘Dreaming’ written by some goody-two shoes trying to moralize the world with his dreams. Crap. And as usual I was taking my nap in the last bench, which became routine by then during the English classes. (The fact that I played online multiplayer games on my console till midnight also accounted for the naps.)

  Now, by that time my friend had already poked me twice. I knew it was an ominous sign. The ‘poking’ was to alert me whenever the teacher noticed my classroom naps. Mrs. Bent  generally ignored such sleeping ‘lastbench’ students due to the misconception that such students generally disturbed the ‘geniunely interested’ students. Now, I’ve yet to see a ‘genuinely interested’ student, but I knew it was not wise to push it too far. So whenever my friend poked me, I pulled out my best ‘rapt attention’ face and feigned listening to her; though I strongly believed she never bought that.

  But the overwhelming power of drowsiness cannot be won over by poking and I was drifting away into sleep again, when suddenly the whole class became quiet. I jerked awake, as I knew that a classroom going noiseless means trouble. And sure enough I saw the whole class staring at me with turned heads in my direction.

  With  trained agility and experience I stood up and brought forth my facial expression for this situation: a questioning look mixed with extreme innocence. Obviously the teacher must have got fed up and she must have called out my name or even worse, she must have made an angry remark on me. So obviously I have to lie to her face that I was not sleeping; which would be quite difficult considering she already knew I was about to lie. I looked about at the sea of faces in front of me trying to guess the mood of the situation, but they were all expressionless.

    “As I was saying, Mr. Reid, you could make this class a lot more interesting by giving an account of your dreams, which no doubt you were having till now”, Mrs. Bent’s voice rang across the classroom followed by a few laughs and sniggering.

  Ok..I get it now. Humiliation. She wants to get back at me.

  I shook my head still feigning ignorance, and opened my mouth to ask what this is all about. The severe look on Mrs. Bent’s face drained the color off my face and no words came out. Man, it’s better to accept your mistake and apologize in such times. But her angry look and the whole class staring at me, petrified me and I remained motionless.

  “Go on, tell us your dream. I’ll most likely interpret it to the class and exemplify this lesson that dreams are outcomes of your experiences or desires.” she said with a smug grin on her face.

  I distinctly felt aware of the girls sniggering and laughing to my left. Ok, now this is causing serious damage to my reputation; not that I have any reputation, but even so. Preparing for the worst, I took a deep breath and spoke in a low voice:

  “ I’m sorry ma’am. I really am. I was having this headache and my eyes…”

  “No,no,no”, she cut me off. “I insist. Recall any dream of yours. I can tell what they mean to you and interpret them correctly. I am an expert in psychology, so…go on”

  Is she serious? I mean ‘interpreting dreams’? Come on. Is she some Divinition teacher from Harry Potter books? And what has this got to do with a poem on dreaming? All she was trying to do was punish me by humiliating me in front of the whole class. Well, I’ll just have to talk my way out of this as quickly as possible.

  “It’s not like that. It’s true that I was dozing a little, but…..” I was again cut off.

  “Just tell me”, she yelled suddenly. I was quite taken aback at this insanity, and a few students in the front actually jumped in their seats. And before I knew what was happening I opened my mouth in instinct and blurted out:

  “ I..Iwas..I was chasing after the school bus.”

  I almost clapped my hand over my mouth. Why the hell did I say that? I should have kept mum and she would have shouted herself over. Now I made the matters worse, if they were already not, to begin with.

  “Ha”, she said with a vindictive smile over her face. “So you were chasing after a bus? That’s common for boys like you. You are in constant fear of losing opportunities and chase after them as seen in your dream. Quite natural, considering your napping sessions during classes.”

  The girls to my left squealed with laughter at this. All the students  started laughing and sniggering  as my face turned red in shame. She got what she wanted. I was angry and frustrated at not being able to do anything. She was still going on about the dream much to the amusement of everyone in the class. All the frustration aroused me and I finally spoke up:

  “Yeah, but I caught the bus finally.”

  There was silence. Everyone stopped their laughing and looked at me. Even Mrs. Bent was surprised and she narrowed her eyes. I was pleased that it wiped the smug grin off her face.

  “Okay, now that’s something”, she said regaining composure. “ So you still have the grit and confidence in you to achieve something. That’s news to me.  Did you see anything more?”

  She was not giving up. But my last act of courage bought me admiration from the students; not many stood up to Mrs.Bent like that. I looked to my left and saw that the girls were not smiling anymore; they were looking at me curiously. Okay, this was not that bad after all; I could still turn this to my advantage.

  I thought of something quickly, cleared my throat and spoke up:

    “I was looking at flying birds through the window.”

Everyone turned towards the teacher. She was unresponsive for a moment and then the ominous smug grin returned to her face.

“Flying birds is a symbol of freedom”, she said. “The desires in you manifested in that form. It means you are not happy with your life. You feel that you are compelled to do things, and you are not having the freedom to do the thing you love most—sleeping”.

    Laughter broke across the class again. She was clearly enjoying doing this. But I was ready this time.

  “ I was holding the cage which released them.”

The whole class went silent again. Nobody expected a second retort.  Mrs.Bent was astonished and wetted her lips. She shook her head , laughed and gave her explanatioin.

“ So, that’s a different angle. You helped the birds out. That signifies your helping nature. That’s a good trait coming from you.”

Aha. Score two for me. I swelled with pride and looked around. The students’ admiration towards me grew more and the girls were all eyes to me. My confidence grew into overconfidence and I wanted to take another stab at her.

“I also saw a bird singing happily in spring.”

Ha, I already analysed her methods. She would say that the bird was a symbol of happiness and that I was happy with my life or some crap of that sort. Nothing can go wrong now. I looked around at the girls and noticed the swelling admiration in their eyes. I would have become the class hero by the next day.

  Mrs.Bent just stood there with a blank expression on her face. The bell rang and the students  started packing their books. The class is over. Finally. And I won. With immense pleasure I started packing my books when Mrs.Bent suddenly spoke:

“ The bird was singing for a mate. It means that you are sexually starved and in dire need of a girlfriend.”

  She took her books and walked out of the classroom. I just stood there aghast at her words, not even daring to look to my left.



          Well, she finally won this contest.