DREAMSCAPING

I had that dream again last night, the one where you find out that because of some technicality, you never actually graduated from high school. And, since you never graduated from high school, you weren’t eligible to go to college, so your degree is invalid, etc., etc. And, of course, the only remedy for this malcompletion is to go back and do the last (mumble) years of your life over again.

I think this dream, though lightly terrifying, is just a safe excuse to review the course of your life–subconsciously–and determine if you’d follow the same path again, if given the choice. So I know why I had this dream last night. I’ve been on my annual post-Easter shutdown for the last two and a half days. It’s a clerical occupational hazard. Easter is a wonderful experience, but once it’s over, it’s time to slough off the accumulated weariness of Lent.

This “shutdown” always accomplishes two things for me: One, it gives me a chance to catch up on my trashy-novel reading. Two, it allows me to review my mental state and my job performance, and decide what’s working well and what needs tweaking. It’s my cure never to be fully satisfied or fully disappointed with my life; therefore, I dream of endless revisions.

Last night, in my dream, I took the path of lifestyle over career, opting to stay back home in Iowa and get a two-year degree from the local junior college. My life was radically different from the one I live now–I had the time to indulge all my interests (especially since I wasn’t married), but I didn’t have the money, and I turned into a dull person. (Well, a duller person, at least; I’m not a swirling vortex of thrills by any means.) In the end, the dream was more nightmare than reverie. I woke up very glad to be who I am.

It’s always nice when your life review leads you back to yourself. But who among us doesn’t indulge in that fantasy of going back to some point in your life and revisiting everything? If you could be the age you are now at some previous point in your life, where would you go? (I only include that “age you are now” so we all avoid the temptation to be sixteen again, but hipper and cooler this time.)

I’ve always had a strange answer to that question–I want to go back to the time of Watergate. As well-studied as that sordid chapter of American history is, I don’t think its story has been fully told. I’d like to be there and be an average person, to see if that really was the point when pervasive, implacable cynicism entered into America’s collective consciousness.

Plus I’d like to see all the cool Modernist architecture one more time.

What say you, readers? If somebody gave you the keys to the Wayback Machine, where would you go?