Teaching in a pandemic

Elaine and I were leaving Chicago after visiting our friends Danny and June. As we neared our car, we saw a copy of The New Yorker that we’d forgotten to pack, sitting in a hammock-like depression in the trunk lid. The magazine had been waiting there all that time.

Then it was time for class. “As you know, there’s a pandemic,” I said. One student raised his hand: he wanted to show everyone a photograph of an ornately designed violin, with lines carved or burned into the wood. He handed me his phone, and I in turn handed it to Elaine, sitting next to me in the subway car. We were having class in a subway car.

Then we were in a classroom. A student in the front row began to speak in a preacherly voice about Adam: how Adam was the first president, and how his orders were disobeyed.

This is the nineteenth teaching-related dream I’ve had since retiring. All the others: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18.