What makes you remember dreams more often and more clearly? Is it the timing of your awake and return to sleep? Is it the comfort of the place you're sleeping and the depth of the sleep? Or is it the inherent ridiculousness of the dreams themselves?

So I just returned from Thanksgiving break at home in Raleigh, where I feasted, slept, watched Modern Family, ate, considered doing homework, slept and consumed food.  It was glorious. But now I’m back.

One of the weirdest things about going home though? I tend to dream a lot, and it gets pretty weird.

So there I was, in a traditional school classroom with what must’ve been at least 20 members of my extended family, being taught Spanish by what appeared to be Gloria from Modern Family with the teaching style of Jane Lynch from Glee. (For those who are hopelessly behind on their TV viewing plans, Gloria is a young and sassy Colombian mother with a fantastic accent. Jane Lynch plays a cheerleading coach who abhors happiness and individuality.)

For some reason Gloria Lynch takes our class outside to a field.   I sit down on a picnic bench with a large quantity of classmates who do not appear to be related to me, and Gloria Lynch leads some of my other classmates to another picnic bench across the field and over a fence for some reason.  There they begin to play some minute-to-win-it-esque game involving balloons and possibly marshmallows.

I suffer through an internal dilemma. My classmates are by definition my peers. They must be my age and worthy of my respect as equals. However they seem like they are young campers and I am their counselor. I treat them as such. I am overly-friendly and I get them excited for whatever silly Spanish game we’re playing. One of the campers is my nephew Cyrus but he is 6 years older than he should be.

Gloria Lynch is yelling at my fellow students/campers/relatives, cursing in incomprehensible Spanish. She is a horrible teacher. I’m pretty sure she is making severely inappropriate sexual advances towards multiple campers/relatives (I’m not sure which makes it more disturbing to me.). Apparently she is being fairly graphic and including farm animals in her verbal assaults. 

We go back to the classroom. I have a long discussion on the walk back with a reasonable, intelligent, Spanish-speaking friend from high school. I have zero clue about who he is or whether or not he was actually reasonable, intelligent, Spanish-speaking, or my friend in high school. When we get back, it is obvious that something must be done about Gloria Lynch’s horrible totalitarian and wholly inappropriate teaching style.

Before I can begin to waffle about starting an initiative of my own, my brother Stephen bravely steps up to speak to her.  He reasonably and politely stakes his claim, telling her that she is being a little bit too severe and harsh with us. She slaps him across the face.

He tells her that she is probably being really inappropriate with her advances and that she is a nice lady but everyone would like it a lot if she would chill out.  She slaps him hard with the back of her hand.

I wake up, curious about why my subconscious is directing so much violence towards Stephen and concerned about the frequency with which Gloria plays commanding authoritarian roles in my dreams.