For your amusement

I didn't do a whole lot yesterday  other than more sewing, so here's a dream I had last night. I think I know what it means:

I was standing around at a train station, not one that is one I ever use (it might not be one that even exists in actuality) waiting for a train. I was back to TA days, or at least, I was much younger than I am now, and closer in age to my students.

One of my former students, from the class that had just concluded for the semester approaches me. Cute guy, the sort of physical type I like. He notes that he recognizes me and then immediately asks if I want to be his girlfriend.*
I'm taken aback by that - no normal adult man asks someone point blank to be his girlfriend, especially not without dating her a bit, and some men never really ask, they just assume at some point.. So it seems strange, but I am sufficiently flattered (and, as I said, he's the physical type that appeals to me) so I agree. And there's some sense of excitement, very like I would have felt in my 20s: I finally have a *boyfriend*. The world will finally see me as *normal* because I'm now coupled.

And I also think: well, at least I won't have to sit next to a complete stranger on the train (I was traveling coach.)

And we stand there and talk. Several times, I see lights approaching (it is nighttime) and everyone who is waiting edges up to the yellow line for boarding....and then the train turns out to be a freight, and we all hurry back so we don't get blasted by its horn/buffeted by the wind it creates.

And he and I stand there and talk. And it slowly dawns on me: he's talking about one of the examples I discussed in class, and he thinks I meant it as a joke with a punchline rather than an honest, earnest example. And I realize: not only is this guy naive (which I could work with), but he's also dumb as a sack of hammers (which really would be a dealbreaker: not being able to have anything approaching a detailed, adult conversation).

And the train doesn't come, and it doesn't come, and I realize with increasing dismay that this nice and good looking guy is SERIOUSLY dumb, like, I'm not sure I can stand here and think of things to say to him dumb.

And then I woke up.

The trains were probably a red herring of sorts; I live close enough to tracks that I can just, at the corners of my consciousness, hear the freights as they go by, and so I often have trains in my dreams. (Well, also the fact that all the long-distance travel I've done in the past ten years has been by train, so sometimes I think they're symbolic of an escape)

I think the main theme though was, what if you got what you thought you wanted and it turned out not to be what you wanted after all?

Dangit, brain.

(*In the real world, I would never ever ever date a student, even if he were sufficiently close to me in age UNLESS he had graduated or otherwise almost impossible that he'd ever take a class of mine again. Because having someone you were dating in class would be too weird, and also, it raises all kinds of sticky ethical issues.)