Tuesday, June 10, 2003

Last night I dreamed that I was a medical doctor.  However, I had exactly the same knowledge base that I have now, so somehow I had procured an MD and a job in the ER at a hospital without learning a single thing about medicine.  Then there was a terrible fire somewhere near us, and they started wheeling in this seemingly endless string of people who had been burned terribly.  They all had their faces covered with gauze, and they were screaming and moaning.  They actually were evocative of the scary kid from "Johnny Got His Gun" in Metallica's legendary video for the song "One."  Nearly every doctor in the hospital came to the ER to help and do surgery and all that, but I spent the whole dream lurking in storerooms and avoiding anyone so that I didn't have to perform any medical procedures, because I didn't know anything.  It wasn't that I feared exposure--whenever I ran into anyone, I told them that I just didn't know what to do.  They were all totally unaffected by this, seemingly.  It was actually a terrible humiliating and even somewhat frightening dream.  The Freudian meaning seems clear; I fear being skill-less in a skill-needy world.  Just as clearly, I must go to medical school ASAP. Notably, I woke up to an actual nightmare--a teething, screaming baby refusing to sleep at 4 AM. 9:23:43 PM    Let's hear it. []