Recurring dream.
It is twenty one years since I left school. If I had done the fashionable thing and dropped a sprog in Sixth Form, I could be a grandmother by now.
I think it's fair to say that by Upper Sixth I was getting mighty fed up of school. Nothing major, just it was time to move on, stop being treated like a kid, but structures make it difficult to walk out two-thirds through A-Levels. I started playing truant rather frequently - a bit ironic that I never properly skived school until I was adult. Pointless General Studies, horrendous compulsory PE, even worse three-line whipped RE.
But I tended to get to school early, well before the bell, often early enough to be the one that gets to unlock the school (yes, seriously, and that wasn't just a Sixth Form privilege). I can't actually recall but I suspect there may have been occasions when I couldn't bear another school assembly so just stayed in the Sixth Form Common Room. If I did, I certainly wasn't alone. If my absence from the register being taken was noticed it wasn't commented. By Sixth Form "the buses were crowded, couldn't get on" was a well rehearsed in truth excuse.
But every few weeks I have a dream of panic that I'm missing assembly, full in the knowledge that there will be dire consequences, and I'm straining every sinew to be there. Strange, because School Assembly was never a Bad Thing. Never a Good Thing, either. Just a Thing. Over quickly enough, better than most of the boring lessons. Not as good as lunchtime.
I am not sure why I have this recurring dream, almost a nightmare, of something that never mattered a great deal when it was current, over half a lifetime ago.
Ah well, dentist in eight hours. A new dentist, to whom I shall have the tiresomeness of explaining,"No, I really don't have any fillings. Yes, my teeth are filthy dirty. No, I haven't seen a dentist in two-and-a-half years because the evil bitch who took over from my lovely dentist deliberately banged her instrument against a nerve so that I have momentary intermittent pain when I eat chocolate. Yes, I used to adore going to the dentist until that evil bitch called Nicola, who seemed very smug when she assured me if I didn't give up smoking I'd get cavities...whoopy do, let me join the rest of the human race with their mouths full of filigree." That's the demon I need to bury, not some made-up fear of School Assembly - Pseudoscolionoassembliophobia.
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