Wednesday, March 28, 2007

A Library Loss of Control Dream

Last night I dreamt I was at my first library, which was in the dream three times larger than it ever was. It had a maze of rooms and corridors. I found my way to the reference desk. Here is what happened.

Two insurance men come to the desk and one askes to use the meeting room again to present an "informative" program. He almost laughs when he says "informative." I tell them that they may not because they broke their promise not to promote themselves. The taller man says, "Wasn't that great! I sold five policies on the spot. He sold three."

While I am explaining that this is against library meeting room policy, I look up to see an older woman in a floor-length fur coat and her chauffeur headed for the emergency exit. I bound over and say, "Stop, please, the alarm will sound." They ignore me and go right through. The alarm sounds and I stop it with my key.

After I reset the alarm, I turn and see a long line of older women in floor-length furs headed my way! Then I wake from the dream.

Occasionally I have library dreams and almost all go back to the scene of my first professional position. I was new to the field and had little authority then. It makes psychoanalytic sense to have my dreams there.

Do you have library dreams?

3 comments:

ActLikeOne said...

The only time I had a library dream was last summer when the Summer Reading Program was in full swing. The only part of the dream I remember was that I was working the front circulation desk and all the little children and their parents came in at once to return piles of books and check out more piles of books, and the pages weren't there to help. All of them had called in sick that day.

That was a scary dream, come to think of it.

Anonymous said...

Oh, man, I have these all the time, and they're always the same: it's late, like LATE, 2 a.m., and I can't get patrons off the computers and I can't lock the doors until they leave and meanwhile more patrons keep coming in! Yikes. Actlikeone's dream above also seems quite scary.

Anonymous said...

I also have a "patrons won't leave" nightmare once a year or so. It's after closing time (9 pm at our library) and we've made the closing announcement and patrons just keep sitting at the computers or at tables and won't listen to me when I tell them we're closed and they have to leave and now it's 9:15 and they still won't leave and then it's 9:30 and they still won't leave. . . I wake up exhausted!