My "Looking Glass" Experience

I had a strange dream on Saturday evening. It's nothing like the dreams I've had about my teeth falling out and turning up for my 'A' level maths exam completely unprepared. Those count as nightmares and I have those more than any other bad dream.

This latest one was different. I dreamt I was back at boarding school. It wasn't the one I went to. It was rather mediocre and run-down. I was meant to be sharing a room with another boy but to my horror, it was a triple-share and a make-shift one at that. I had a single bed on one side of the room and the other two boys had to share a double-decker bed. They obviously didn't like it and kept giving me muderous looks all evening prior to bedtime.

The strange about this dream was that in it, I wasn't my younger self in the dream but myself, at my current age, qualified lawyer and all.

What made this dream strange was its premise - why didn't I object to being at the boarding school in my dream? It's no secret that when I was in boarding school, it wasn't a particularly happy time of my life (at least initially but that's true of any new environment) and I resented my parents for sending me to it.

In my dream, we'd gone to bed for the evening (this was the night before the start of term) when it started to rain very heavily and as a result, the ceiling started to leak. I was woken up by the dampness and was infuriated.

Having a leaking ceiling in my room was the final straw. I must have resented being at the boarding school in the first place and I certainly resented having to share a room (I never share rooms whenever I travel on business) and I was going to have none of it. By this time the red mist had descended and I stomped out of the room to find the Housemaster, swearing loudly enough to wake the other residents and teachers. When I got to his room, I shulder-charged the door and dragged the Housemaster from his bed. He was obviously not best pleased about being so rudely awoken in the middle of the night by a demanding student (who also happened to be a qualified lawyer) and not being shown any respect whatsoever - remember I took an oath to uphold the law without fear or favour and sometimes take that oath a bit too seriously. I roundly berated the Housemaster for the leak in the ceiling and demanded that something be done about it immediately, even if it meant the Housemaster vacating his room for me to occupy until the leaking ceiling had been repaired.

Needless to say, the Housemaster utterly galled that a student should make such an outrageous demand and eventually, the Headmistress turned up. Needless to say, she got no respect from me either. She was dressed in a pink flannel dressing gown and her greying hair was all done up in bun. She was likewise shouted at without any mercy and although I had lost my temper, I nevertheless had enough self-control not to use any obscenities on either of them. Perhaps even in my dream, I still believed that having to resort to obscenities when losing one's temper shows are sad lack of vocabulary.

I wasn't going to give either of them an opportunity to make excuses and gave them an ultimatum to fix the ceiling within 24 hours or the Housemaster would have to spend the rest of the academic year living in my shared room. At that point, I forcefully shoved both Housemaster and Headmistress out of the room and locked the door behind them.

Strangely enough, I wasn't in the least afraid of being expelled. At that point in time, I was already going through the options in my head and was thinking about what pre-emptive legal proceedings I could take. I had already decided that I would consult my solicitors the next morning (I would never do my own legal work having been taught that a lawyer who acts for himself has a fool for a client) should the school decide to take legal action against me for battering the Housemaster.

There the dream ended. I don't know how things were eventually resolved but it was rather cathartic.

It was a glimpse into my (not so) subconscious mind. I don't know what to make of it myself and I don't think there is any standard explanation for the imagery in my dream seeing as it was quite complex and wide-ranging.

As a student, I would never have done anything like this although if it happened to me now, were I to be staying in a hotel where something similar happened, I would not hesitate to make my views known to the duty manager and noisily demand to be moved to another (better) room. That said, it's never happened to me and I don't think I would ever be provoked in to losing my temper like that.