losing my teeth

I had a dream yesterday morning about my teeth. It was one of those extremely vivid dreams that grabs you by the throat and haunts you the rest of the day, so I thought I would share it.

I dreamed that I went to the dentist. It was a new dentist (for me) and also a woman. After a few minutes in her chair, she decided that I needed to have five teeth removed. Not only that, but they needed to come out right away. She put me under immediately, and when I returned to consciousness, I had this strange feeling . . . Five teeth were missing! The one with the filling in it was gone (I only have one filling) and so were four others. This felt wrong. I didn't think anything was wrong with my teeth. I tried to smile, but couldn't because my mouth was so swollen and sore.

I felt that I had had something taken from me without my consent.

I've done a lot of dream analysis in my day, so I'm going to take a crack at it. (And if any of my students are reading, I hope you recognized the archetypal images!)

Wednesday, during our last day of finals in my class, several students "dropped off" late assignments, hoping that I would accept them, and hoping that they would get at least some credit. Well, I did accept them. Yes, I know better. But despite all I've been taught about discipline and fairness and teaching responsibility . . . I just accepted them.

And I felt kind of robbed. I felt like I had given away a little too much.

And I think that's one regret I have about my first semester as a teacher. I gave away too much. Too many easy grades. Accepted too many late assignments. Yadda yadda. Don't get me wrong. I have a LOT of positive feelings about my first time at bat, but this is something that has been following me for a long time, and really bothers me whenever it comes up.

Back in my days as a pseudo-salesman, we learned a concept called "I'm OK". Really simple. I'm okay, and there's nothing that could possibly happen in this classroom in the next 85 minutes that would change that fact. I'm OK. Easy, right? Not always easy to remember when you're worried so much about being liked. (Gotta stop that.)

Anyway, it's obvious that my teeth were representing something important to me that I gave away too easily. (And it was difficult to smile afterwards.)

Another day, another lesson. That's what school is all about, right?

Posted: Fri - December 19, 2003 at 10:36 AM

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losing my teeth

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