What does it mean when you dream you are driving over the Vincent Thomas bridge in a golfcart, racing to get across before the sun disappears into the ocean? And when you get there, you find yourself on a golf course, with gift stores and an industrial kitchen? And many of your AP students are working in the kitchen? And when they see you, they cheerfully suggest a game of Simon Says? So you start ordering them around: “Simon says, Eat those sugar cubes!” “Simon says, crush the ice!” “Simon says…” and you run out of things that you can tell them to do, because you realize you’re enjoying yourself a little too much, like some demented Svengali? And besides that, the sun is almost down (slowest sunset in the world), and you have to get back across the bridge because you have no headlights on your golf cart? Hmm? What kind of dream is that?

This was the dream that made me almost late for proctoring the PSAT. I had already been up and around, but just laid down again for a second, just a quick little second, to enjoy the sensation of being in bed but awake, and zingo, I fell through the bottom of consciousness and ended up on a bridge, flooring the golf cart and willing it to get up that steep expanse of bridge.