| So I dreamed last night that someone had talked me into going back to Chuuk. I really didn’t want to, but everyone insisted that it was the right thing to do. My family started to pack up all my things, and I tried to accept it. It would only be for the remainder of the school year, the semester at the very least. So in my dream, I went through all of the terrible emotions of trying to accept the decision, trying to make the best of the thought of going back, trying desperately to get out of it, bleak despair at the thought of going back, fear of flying and of the bumpy, life-jacket-less boat ride. I relieved the memories of triumphs and trials. I tried to plan ways to get around the remoteness, the awful post office system, the lack of phones and internet and comfort. . . And my leopard print muumuu with the bright red flowers and hot pink lace got packed up for me along with a few books and a bag of snacks. I called the missionaries on Guam and begged them to let me stay there. I had friends there and a church I could participate in! They told me that they really didn’t need me, but that I could be really helpful out there in Chuuk. I could already feel the sweat start to bead on my brow and feel the crinkly crepe of an unflatteringly awful muumuu, to smell the fish and rice and Spam… I woke up shivering and gasping at 3:30 in the morning, emotional and exhausted. It was a fearsome thing to surrender to sleep again, when dreams can wreak that kind of distress. But I was powerless to resist, and I was off again. . . I was at work at Rhea Central, and I had been cornered and forced to be a lunchroom monitor! No matter that that took time away from my ESL kids! I was a teacher assistant, so that meant that I had to take my turn doing lunch duty. I was in the hallway, watching some chatty little girls in fourth or fifth grade, when, to my dismay, I saw the “little young innocents” pass meth to each other! I leapt over there and asked them what on earth they thought they were doing! I demanded that they empty their pockets then and there. Being the cute, conniving dealers they were, they immediately began to cry, not wanting to yield. Immediately, a vice principal appeared and yanked me aside. He bawled me out for making the little girls cry. Nothing, he avowed, could condone such harsh treatment of sweet little children. He was about to put me on probation for my job when my alarm rang and ripped me back into a frozen grey morning. Any wonder why I barely made it to school on time this morning? I needed that extra cup of tea this morning. . . |
