"Beware the Undertoad..."

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Do you recognize the post title? Yes, that's right. It's from The World According to Garp. I haven't read it in a while but I think it's what the little boy thought everyone was saying when they really meant, Beware the undertow. Mishearing them, he had visions of this giant toad sitting at the bottom of the sea, looking up for little boy legs to gobble down.

Dreamed last night that I was rooming with four undergraduate girls who were super young and cute and partying and I came home to find that they drank all of my Kahlua and filled it back up with water. They wanted to go out again and I said I would go with them, but I wasn't dressed appropriately--wore my raggedy looking sneakers next to their cute yellow and orange delicately strapped sandals. A guy friend of mine who was going with me had an embarrassingly large spaghetti sauce stain on the front of his white pleated shirt (the shirt was just as attention getting as the stain). Then later, I was trying to get from the Jersey shore back to Philadelphia, but had to swim across an ocean of choppy gray water with shark fins breaking the surface. I made it to the other side though, remember feeling physically relieved in the dream when my feet touched the sand and I could stand up and hurry toward shore.

I attribute the dream to a couple of things related to the classes I'm taking now--one is that half of my small group team is made up of undergraduate Penn students and next to them, I often feel old and oafish; uncool, clumsy.  Then also, I have to give a presentation in my other class tonight and I don't feel prepared. I'm sure it will be fine--that class is a generous group of women--all nearer my age, but I still don't love the idea of having to offer up a PowerPoint.

My anxiety dreams are not opaque--insecurities and fears are right there like the shark fins, visible, obvious.
 

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