Blurring The Lines

As long as I can remember, my mom has "spoken for" our pets. She'll say something and pretend it's what the animal is saying. And she won't admit that it's really her and not the pet. Often, a dog will look on with a worried and helpless expression while my mom carries on a conversation for it. I get the impression the pet really didn't intend to say what she claims it does, but she will never back down. Ever. She denies any implication that she is just making it all up.

In the "conversations" I've had with pets over the years, my mom has always called me "sis." As in, the cat is calling me sis. It's as if the pets are my younger siblings. But my mom has never gone so far as to actually call them her children. She allows the pets to be part of the family, but doesn't take it further than that.

Ok, so I just saw a commercial in which a lady is talking about how much her son likes her new car. Then she specifies that her "son" is a cocker spaniel. Now, you'd think that with my background of blurred distinctions between people and their pets, I could take this in stride. But this is bizarre! I'm saying it's freaking weird to claim animals as your children. This is coming from me. It's weird. That is all.

Academic Nightmares

Who else has had this dream? I'm going to class and getting good grades, and then toward the end of the semester I realize there was a class I signed up for but forgot to go to the whole semester. I panic and start going, but then forget until it's time for finals, and I either a) go to the final and bomb it or b)realize the grade have already been issued and there's no escape from my failing grade. I've had this nightmare a lot over the last three years. Curiously, it only started after I graduated. It's been slowing down in frequency for the last year or so, as I settle into the certainty that I did graduate and I do have a certificate that states SUU does, in fact, own my soul.

But last night a new dream emerged from the recesses of my fevered brain. I was in the process of applying to USU and everything seemed to be going well, when suddenly I was fired from my job and rejected on my application in one fell swoop. I begged my employer to let me know why they had fired me, and they said they had received a letter about me but would say no more.

So I went to the admissions dept at USU and begged to know if they had received a letter, and it turned out they had. But they wouldn't tell me what it was about, only that it had come from a high school English teacher named Ms. Davis, who was my teacher in Battle Mountain and who happened to be in town. So I looked her up and went to talk to her. She was all stony silence at first, but after much begging on my part she divulged that she had it on very good authority that in the tenth grade I had written an analytical essay about The Diary of Ann Frank without actually having read the book. I was guilty, and I knew it. I begged for mercy. As a defense, I mentioned that the movie of Ann Frank follows the book pretty well. She was unmoved. She had found me out, and as a punishment I would never go to any college ever gain, and I could just forget about vet school because it wasn't going to happen.

I left my conversation with Ms. Davis (who is, in reality, a very good English teacher) reeling from the shock of the blow. I wandered around USU campus, wondering who else I might speak with to defend my actions, knowing it was all too late, mourning the loss of my last chance. I was sad.

When I woke up I felt incredibly relieved that it had only been a dream. But then my next thought was, "Here come the nightmares!" (Side note: my older brothers showed me installments one through three of The Nightmare on Elm Street saga when I was four years old, but I never had a nightmare about it. But college? This is scary stuff.)