A Dream About A High School Library and Standing Up For What’s Right

Last night, I had the following dream. I woke up and wrote the dream down, and here is the unedited transcript of what I wrote:

Dream 1/31/21–2/1/21

I was back in high school, but not the school I attended when I was a teenager — which was in a solidly middle to upper middle class, mostly white neighborhood. This high school of my dreams felt more like the neighborhood I live in now: more urban, much more diverse, and many more students who lack economic privilege. Still, my sense in the dream was that the school was a vibrant community where I fit in and had friends.

It was that last day before Thanksgiving break, a Monday or a Tuesday at the beginning of that week. It was toward the end of the day, perhaps there was an after-school program for kids (like me) whose parents would not be at home (again, this is not like my experience from my adolescence, when my mother did not work outside the home). A large number of students were gathered in the cafeteria which had been turned into an impromptu study hall, of course, we were kids, so there was as much socializing and studying going on. Still, I was working on a project that would require the use of a computer and a printer.

There was an announcement: the school’s library had been taken over by a…