Flashback Dream

Just awake from a dream.

Not my usual, out of the twilight zone / outer limits type of dream that makes little sense.

Instead a flashback dream from younger years.

Preface it with the fact that I used to work parttime with the city in primarily youth recreation programs.

In the summer months we would offer two-week sports camps, four two-week sessions.

I would lead / teach mostly basketball but did an occasional soccer and baseball camp.

I did this for 15-20 years with different program offerings for each yearly season, finally leaving amid rumors of programs ending due to city budget cuts .... and partially because I was tired of working nights at my fulltime job, getting off work and rushing .... often across town for 2-4 hours of being bright and peppy when all I really wanted to do was sleep. But I also had concerns about being relevant any longer as I was entering middle age .... my fifties.  

I wasn't sure when I walked away for the last time, if it was actually the last time and these days those last few weeks and how it all ended seems like a blurred time of my life.

Mostly it felt like it was just time to walk away.

In the dream, after all the years away, I received a phone call from my program director in those end years asking if I could be an emergency fill-in for an indoor soccer camp .... and I was needed ASAP which turned out to be five minutes.

How I acquired and donned the red and navy-blue staff colors and was transported across town in less than five minutes wasn't addressed in the dream.

Eight, eight-year-olds in a gym about ten yards in width, all apparently in their first soccer experience.

(Basketball is what I grew up with and knew. Soccer was mostly new to me also. I'd often adapt old basketball drills for use as soccer drills., especially after watching a friend play once and realizing that  the three-man patterns that soccer forwards would execute to get an attempt at goal was very similar to what happens in a basketball game.)

So here I suddenly found myself in this dream, in this bandbox of a gym with eight short attention span kids and their parents, one that eventually stepped forward to help, and after all the years of retirement, attempting to teach basic soccer skills. 

In my dream world, the usual weird dream .... or at least what I remember from it upon awakening ..... is just a few minutes (or seconds even) in length.  

This return to youth soccer dream felt like it was every minute of a two-hour camp session in length.  

And in the dream, I felt the constant sense of panic and anxiety that often accompanies not being prepared.

And the uncertainty of wondering if I was a one-day fill-in or if I needed to return the next day ..... and the even bigger question of .... do I need to gather and stuff all this soccer gear in my car because I don't have keys to lock it up in a storage room.

So hopefully the dream doesn't resume tonight with day two of a two-week camp. 

Because I'm not possessing that sort of extreme saintly patience any longer., 

And hopefully if it does resume it's in a basketball scenario where I could at least show up with an improvised lesson plan.

I awoke with panic carrying over that I was late for work this morning ..... then realized that it's day three of the four day Thanksgiving weekend and all I really need to do was either: 

• a) Go back to sleep and face the possibility of the dream resuming
• b) Put on my shoes and drive to McDonalds for a sausage biscuit and orange juice
• c) Fire up my turntable and cd player and give a listen to yesterday's vinyl and compact disc finds.