Still having school nightmares

I am half a century old. It is time to stop having school anxiety nightmares. Last night’s was a doozy – forced to go back to school, I was faced with a two-hour essay exam. In my backpack were dozens of pads, each one completely filled with writing, and I had nothing to write my essay on. The teacher had no more paper. I started freaking out. I left to wander the halls, hoping to pop my head into a room and get some paper from a teacher, out of a printer, anything. No one could help, no printers could be found. One offered me 3×5 cards, which were all individually wrapped in plastic. The front office secretary assumed I was there for detention and curtly told me to come back at 3:45. She wouldn’t listen to my question, just kept repeating the time to be there. In the hall in front of the office were displays with dozens of student projects, all handwritten reports in pads and notebooks. I started rifling through them, hoping to find some blank pages to remove. Not a one. Every pad was filled. Now I had wasted half an hour out of the 2 hour exam and didn’t see how I could possibly finish the exam. Eventually I found what seemed like the social services office, where there was some kind of student-parent drama going on but a very helpful counselor offered me some of their paper. Now I had to worry about whether I could find my way back to the classroom in this unfamiliar school.

So I was glad when I woke up to the beginnings of the blizzard. Told Hannah my dream, and she was surprised that I still had school anxiety dreams (seems like it never stops), and helpfully suggested I look for printers. “I tried that! There were no printers to be found!”