in a dream, i was in class with my little brother’s childhood friend, christian. i was still the age i am now, while christian was the age i remember him—about 7 or 8 years old. i must have been acting as a teacher’s aide in his kindergarten class. at first, he was asking me whether he could bring a baggie or cookies to school. i told him that he should ask his mom or his teacher. he said they already told him no. they wanted him to eat healthier snacks like raisins and nuts. i told him he should probably listen. then he told me that he would just bring the cookies anyway and just sneak them at his desk when nobody was looking. i thought of telling him that’s what i would do when i was his age, but decided against it. next, the class was taking a spelling test. i was seated at one of the desks next to christian. there were about twenty other kids in the class. they all had their eyes closed. the teacher was going around the room taping up cards with letters on them. i gathered that she was spelling out a word that the class had attempted to spell on their tests (this way they could see if they had gotten it right). i watched this like a person out of place, bewildered at first, and then studying, trying to understand. when christian opened his eyes, he looked at the cards that were taped up. “got that one,” he said. i watched him make a check mark next to the word on his test paper. at that point, i wasn’t sure who i was anymore. was i christian’s age? was i a student in this class? the table’s turned and i started to ask christian questions. “should i be taking this test?” i asked him. “probably,” he said. and pointed with the pink eraser end of his pencil to a stack of papers in the middle of our desks. i grabbed one and a pencil, and then started listening to the teacher and looking around to try and gather what the words were that i had missed. it was right then that i started to feel out of place. i wondered, wait, who am i? what day is today? i remembered that i own an iPhone. and i thought, “oh shoot, what day is today?” i reached in my pocket to check my digital calendar. a feeling of dread came over me as i feared i might have missed my flight back to san francisco. then i woke up, back into my adult life, at 2:25am on monday morning. i felt relieved that i hadn’t missed my flight and wasn’t late to anything or out of place. i was just in bed waiting to go to work in the morning.