4:17?

It was a late-afternoon class, the first after a long break, perhaps for Thanksgiving, so long a break that I wasn’t sure of the room number. 311? 310? 309? I looked through the doors and saw my class in 309. I was teaching Gilgamesh and wasn’t sure where we were picking up, but I figured out that we must have had two classes on the work to go. I wanted to say something about an American Experience episode about Erroll Garner that was airing that night on PBS, but I thought I should save that for the end of the class.

I assigned the last sections of Gilgamesh for the next class and began to do a little recapping when I noticed that the clock in the room was off. And everyone’s phone told a different time. The Daylight to Standard Time change must have kicked in, or Standard to Daylight. Anyway, the class was underway. “I am doing what is called lecturing,” I said, and I was doing quite well, talking about Gilgamesh, Humbaba, Eve and Adam, and divine rage. I noticed Roscoe Mitchell sitting in on the class. Wow. He was wearing a tie, as he often does when performing. I recognized him immediately, of course.

All at once, everyone streamed out. The clock on the wall said 4:17, but in fact the time was 4:50. Class over.

This is the twenty-fourth teaching-related dream I’ve had since retiring. In all but one, something has gone wrong.

*

Perhaps the strangest thing about this dream: it happened earlier this morning. Roscoe Mitchell was born on August 3, 1940.

Related reading
All OCA teaching dreams (Pinboard)

[In waking life, the change from Daylight to Standard or back often left classroom clocks all awry for days — off not by an hour but by some random stretch of minutes. Call Building Services!]