Role Reversals

First, allow me to explain a few recurring dream themes and their significance prior to appearing in this dream:

• I have “high school” dreams all the time, but I’m usually a teenager in school, not visiting as an adult.
• I have “searching for a restroom” dreams quite often, which usually end in confusion as I’m unable to find a functioning restroom or one that is not occupied.
• Occasionally, I have “lost object” dreams where I’m searching for something throughout the dream, usually to no avail.

The fact that I am an adult and help others with these situations seems to be a significant moral in this dream, and I awoke feeling confident and fulfilled.

[07-24-2010]

A group of teenagers are rehearsing a play in a high school auditorium. I’m there observing along with several other adults in the audience. The acting is terrible and several of the teens are speaking in bad foreign accents, making the production even worse. The director (a teacher at the high school) takes a break, but never returns. After a while, the teens realize that they are unsupervised and gradually start to leave in small groups, some talking about “getting wasted” as they stroll off.

Cassandra [my “BFF” from high school] has been watching beside me and asks if I know where a restroom is in the school. Assuring her that it couldn’t be too difficult to locate, I lead her inside and we find a girl’s locker room just around the corner. The front half of the room consisted of lockers and changing areas and seemed to be in decent condition. The back half of the room, however, appeared to have once been a restroom but had been utterly destroyed – toilets broken into pieces, stalls leaning on each other or laying on the floor, and excrement and menstrual blood everywhere (on broken toilets, on the floors and smeared on the walls). We carefully maneuvered around the mess, trying to find just one working stall, and eventually gave up and left.

Late that night, we’re wondering around downtown and hanging out in an abandoned building with a group of friends. We leave to see if any bars or clubs are still open and my friend Pamela says that she’s lost her umbrella. I offer to go look for it, as I need to use the restroom anyway. I go back to the abandoned building and find that there does not seem to be any way to get upstairs to the restrooms. I have a strangely pseudo-lucid moment and decide to use a large cloth bag to teleport upstairs (simply by believing it will work). Standing in the center of the bag, I lift the sides around me and over my head. I squeeze my eyes closed briefly, and then drop the bag to find that I am indeed upstairs. Happy with myself, I strut to the restroom, take a quick leak and teleport myself back downstairs through the bag. 

[Note: Using the restroom in my dreams is a major accomplishment.] 

Before I leave the building, I happen upon Pamela’s tall red umbrella and take it back to the group with me. One of our friends met up with someone who worked at a mall and managed to get everyone “after hours passes” to hang out inside. I teasingly tell Pamela that I’ll trade her umbrella for one of the passes, and she hands me one of the round white buttons, which I pin to my shirt. The dream fades into a “happily ever after” ending with us strutting off to the mall.