What Tylenol 3 does to me
I went face down on the bed to take a Tylenol 3-induced nap and had the following dream:
I was in college at a night class with B and we were being shown an educational movie.
The teacher gave us a break at some point during the movie, and I drove my car over to the bathroom, which was at an elementary school around the corner from the college.
I went into the building and into the girls’ bathroom. The room was busy because other women from other night classes over at the college were on break, too, and they had to use the bathroom as well. But get this - the boys’ bathroom was at the end of the room IN the girls’ bathroom, so boys have to walk THROUGH the girls’ bathroom to get to their bathroom! Thusly, at night for college class breaks, MEN have to walk through the bathroom that grown women are using
I found a stall on the intersection corner of the bathroom, entered and closed the door.
I quickly realised that the stall doors were too high, and that unless I squatted above the toilet seat, anyone walking by on the outside might see my privy bits if they looked at the bottom of the stall doors!
I then realised that the stall door was broken - it wouldn’t stay closed, and there was a GAP, so people could see in if they wanted to. I peered out and saw men and women walking past the stall I was in, fearful that they would look in at me.
To make matters worse, the walls of the stalls in this bathroom did not go to the ceiling - they were only about five feet tall, so adults could easily peek over the tops of them if they wanted to.
As I sat there hovering above the toilet and still trying to keep myself covered in case someone opened the door or became a peeping tom, suddenly I heard a knock at the stall door, and a woman peeked in, asking, “Could you put this in there for me?”, and she thrust a new roll of toilet paper through the door. I told her to get out, I’m trying to pee, and grabbed hold of the door.
The woman was caucasian, and wearing some kind of peach and white maid uniform. She was part of the nightly cleaning crew.
She dropped the toilet paper roll as her wrist caught on the slamming door, and pulled her hand out before any real damage could be done (if any damage, since there was a gap in the damned door, anyway).
I began cursing and yelling that she could WAIT until I’m done peeing FIRST, and then take care of the toilet paper HERSELF. I could hear her elsewhere in the bathroom replying that she was just trying to save time.
I took a deep breath and exhaled, trying to focus so I could pee. I got a little out but I knew I had more, and it just wouldn’t come out because of the anxiety.
I flushed the toilet and exited the stall to find a four-foot tall elderly Chinese woman sweeping the bathroom floor. She looked up at me, then looked away quickly and kept about her business. The bathroom was emptying out now, save for one or two other women. I knew the other cleaning lady was around there somewhere.
I turned to face left and walked down the row of sinks towards the boys’ bathroom entrance. The woman I was searching for appeared either out of a janitorial closet or the boys’ room and headed straight towards me. I rushed up on her and began yelling at her again. She tried to rush past me with an agitated look, like I was keeping her from her work. I followed after her and told her that all she had to do was stock EMPTY stalls for two minutes until I was finished, instead of barging in like she did. When she tried to talk above me to tell me to get out of her way, I yelled even louder that it’s her own fault she chose such a degrading shitty paying job, and that if she didn’t like making minimum wage, she could go elsewhere, but so long as she’s on this job, she’d better EARN her goddamned money by actually working instead of pushing her duties off onto others.
The four-foot tall elderly Chinese woman stopped sweeping and looked at us. So did two other women; one who was washing her hands, and one who had just exited another bathroom stall. The woman I was yelling at suddenly became aware that she was no longer in control of the situation. She was being humiliated instead of taking pride in humiliating others by opening stall doors while women urinated.
I held my stern glare for a moment more in silence, and pulled my pointed index finger out of her face, and left the bathroom. I exited the elementary school and got back into my car from the small parking lot. I noticed at this point that the cleaning staff was going home for the night. I’d been in the bathroom for quite awhile and now I’d be late to class.
As I slowly drove through the narrow parking lot, a car pulled out of a side-garage like you see built into Victorian homes, only it was still the elementary school. I wondered if it was the maid I’d yelled at, and if she’d be angry and trying to follow me home.
I waited for traffic to pass on the nearby residential street, and then I turned left to head back to the college.
From the back seat (or was it the passenger seat?), B or someone started asking me, “Did you see her? Do you see her? Hey, did you see her?”
Looking in my side view mirror, I said, “No, she’s not behind me, don’t worry about it.” Two cars had pulled in front of her from an adjacent side-street as I drove down the road.
I neared the corner where I would turn right and enter the parking lot to the college, and I wondered if I should go back to the college and finish up class, or if I should just go home, because I was going to be quite late back to class anyway.
The dream ended and I woke up pretty much gasping for air, because the Tylenol 3 had depressed my respiratory system AND I was laying face down on a soft bed. I was out of breath for several minutes and had to sit up straight and take deliberate, slow breaths to get back to normal.
When I woke up, I had to pee very badly. This is always the case that when I dream of having to use the bathroom, it means that I have to use the bathroom in real life.
The part about me being in college is a result of me reading a book before my nap and thinking to myself, “I should really get my ass back into college.”
Me being so deathly afraid of others looking at me half naked is a normal extension of my insecurity issues.
The elderly Chinese woman who was sweeping…hmmm. I would say she could compare to my boss, but my boss is Japanese and not elderly. Although she does make a great habit of looking away and letting my co-worker destroy the damned place around her. Hmmm sweeping stuff under the rug…doesn’t see a problem, must not exist…
The boss wants compassion for her patients, but sings la la la while looking the other way as the co-worker degrades the patients or gets mean with them. The boss wants to treat each situation with honesty and give it your best as it comes up, while the co-worker tells me “No, uh-uh, I ain’t got time, that person called in too late, just say you forgot to order it and put the file away. And don’t bother telling [our boss], there ain’t nothin we can do. I don’t want to deal with talking to [the patient] again when we already know that the contacts won’t be here in that short of time. I don’t like her, anyway.”
(Then she turns around and, an hour later, takes a last minute order from an African-American woman who physically stopped into the office, when she thinks I’m not paying attention).
The yelling at the woman who humiliated me is of course a throwback to the scuffle I got into with my co-worker last week. While we were talking things out, I’d said that I don’t plan to be at this job past December. She’d mentioned that she didn’t think she’d stay in this job, either. It was only supposed to be temporary, and it turned into three years so far.
You don’t know how much her statement both terrified me and repulsed me.
Well, I guess now you do…through my dream. I want to tell my co-worker the things I yelled at the maid in the bathroom in my dream.
The fear of being followed for retaliatory violence is just my usual brain thinking, because I grew up in and around Detroit, where that sort of behaviour is commonplace, and is what I had happen to me at least twice in my life while living there, and what I’ve done to others, because as I said, that sort of thing is commonplace. It’s very immature and wrong, but I’ve also read stories that people do that sort of thing in the Bay Area, too.
*whew* I’m tired again after all that analysing.
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:50 pm
What?? Sherpa is going to NZ for six months?!?!?!?!
I’m way out of the loop! Ray looked at me funny when I asked him about it and I reminded him that I do not have IRC on the laptop to keep caught up with everyone.