When Falls the Coliseum

Paper

Posted on June 30th, 2010 by Fred Siegel

June 21, 2010
I dream it is the first week of school and I am looking at my first set of papers. I see that one student has turned in two different papers for the same assignment. If this were not suspicious enough, both were printed with the smelly blue ink that used to be used with a stencil in hand-cranked copying machines. I go to the computer to look up this student, but I can’t figure out his game. Whatever else happens, though, I refuse to read two papers.

December 22, 2009
I dream I have to leave my family to teach a class. I climb up to my classroom through a series of ornate hatches connected to ladders and when I finally get there it is filled with students I haven’t seen in a long time. One kid approaches me with tiny scraps of paper in his hands, and makes unintelligible sounds. I think he wants me to look at these little scraps of paper as excuse notes. “F! F! F! F!” I scream. He finally leaves. Then I ask other people who the hell they are. I ask a student for a piece of paper to use as an attendance sheet. Instead, she plucks a hair from her head and hands it to me. I can’t use the hair, so I scrounge on the floor for usable paper. In the meantime, the wall to the next room opens up. It appears to be a recording studio, in which an elderly woman plays a messed up version of Cole Porter’s “Another Openin’ Another Show.” A student tries to sing it, but doesn’t know the words, so I jump in.

October 5, 2008
I dream Forrest asks me to look at his magic act to give feedback. I pick up a piece of paper and say “You know what I’d like to do, Forrest? I’d like to be able to hold up this piece of paper and have it spontaneously rip by itself.” As soon as I say it, the paper magically rips. Forrest is amazed and asks me to do it again. I find another piece of paper, hold it up, and miraculously it rips in half. I do this with several pieces of paper, and I am at a loss to explain how it is happening. I assume that the spirit of a dead magician is performing the trick for me. I don’t believe in paranormal phenomena, but given this paper ripping I have to reevaluate my position.

“Fred’s Dreams” appears every Wednesday.