Like Florence Welch says, 'and I had a dream about my old school', but she wasn't there all pink and gold and glittering. Actually, of all the many times I've dreamt of that place, it was the first I wasn't a student or a teacher there.
I was outside what used to be my classroom, reading the schedule of the group inside, trying to see if any teachers I've known were still there, when something caught my eye. They had three subjects related to law and none of that religious gibberish I was forced to study in my day.
Upon commenting it with a woman sitting at the hall inspector's desk, she said it was no wonder that school was forcing the study of law upon their pupils, after all they were a religious school who had gone through a massive scandal of two nuns caught in the act the year before. That schedule was new, it was the first class of the new year and I was happy I wasn't involved.
Suddenly I felt the hands of an inspector trying to grab me from behind and force me back to my classroom. I turned to her with what I knew was a threatening look and grabbed her hand as she was starting to pinch my arm. 'I am not a student. I'm a fucking thirty-year-old-ass man and you will let me go'. The woman who was with me was laughing as we left behind an enormous cloud of hungry students making their way home for lunch at last.
One of those was Matthew, one of the kindest and dearest students I had the pleasure of teaching during the year that is now over. He entered the facing street to collect his grandparents from a storehouse. Because of his parents' previous jobs, those elderly were now only used to sleeping during the day and, because of such, needed to be left at such facility to sleep through the day as their children worked and grandchild had his education.
We were all still walking down that street, discussing the scandals the old school had faced, when we finally entered the venue of the party we were obviously attending but that until then didn't exist.
Tables were adorned with a gigantic chocolate umbrella. The ones in regular position pointed an available table, but there weren't any. I finally found one that sat only three people. I looked at my mother, but she was too busy hosting at the long table. I didn't want to be around people, so I sat where I was to be joined by my sister, who had sent my niece to mother, and my grandmother. We were quick to resume our gossip about those scandals and I soon learned that the infamous make-out session was only a disguise to hide the murder that had taken place within the school walls.
The culprits had been caught and one had accidentally fallen in a swimming pool with naked wires attached to a close light post. The other, at the whistle summon of an unseen person, had been strangled by his own jacket. All of that hot gossip was pointed with puddings and chocolate mousses under gold lighting. It was a very special and chic environment, the one my mother had chosen to host that party we all knew was happening but couldn't exactly know why.
The more me, my sister, and my grandmother gossiped, the happier I felt. That nice feeling you have when, for some God-ordained miracle, you're free of a huge trouble that would, until very recently, consume all of your sanity.
I woke up with a feeling of resolution. The first good night of sleep I've had in a long time. Maybe she was all pink and gold and glittering.
