Nostalgic Dreams

I rarely remember dreams very long, but I had a very pleasant one last night.

I dreamt I was visiting my old elementary school in Charlton, ON. More precisely, the old building where I attended classes rather than the new & modern building which has been in operation for the past 12-15 years or so.

While in the room which was my grade 3-4 class, I was talking to the current day teachers, reminescing about my days there in the 1970s. That's the room where Mrs Lafferty taught me grade 1-2, this is the room with Mrs Milton for grades 3-4, upstairs for grade 5 with Mrs Mitchell, the senior room for grades 7-8 with Mrs Brownlee & Mr Bott. (I went to a different school for grade 6 to attend a french immersion program.)

In my dream, as in real life, all of my elementary level teachers have since retired. For all I know, several of them have passed away. I chatted with in-dream teachers for a while about their predecessors, then about their current roles in the school.

I can't say that my elementary school years were happy times. They were at best a mix: some carefree days as a child blissfully unaware of most worries of the world, some days not so much because of the utter lack of control over one's own body, life, health or fate, at the mercy of practically everyone else's whim or mood. But I was a good student and found the intellectual support I needed to prepare for the rest of my academic life.

That old building was sold in the early 1990s to become a furniture factory; the operations of the Charlton school and the Savard Township school were merged into a single entity on the other side of town prior. I don't know if the old building is still there, or what modifications were made to the interior: I would like to visit it if possible the next time I'm in the area.

Gym Cleaning

On weekends and holidays, I tend to be at the gym for 8am opening. I like to get my workout done so I can move on with the rest of the day, the boys may not be active at that hour so I get more waking time with them later in the day, and I can beat most of the crowds to the weight floor and not have to interrupt my routine for equipment to be available.

The downside of being there very early is that you are faced with the mess from the night before:

Dumbbells everywhere, not to mention discarded water bottles, tissues, hand towels, etc.. And because it is my role & purpose in life to bring order to a chaotic universe, I put everything back where it should be.

Part of it is to resist the forces of chaos, part of it is for my own safety so I don't trip over someone else's unracked weights. A huge part though is empathy for other gym users: there's nothing more frustrating than knowing there should be plenty of 15lb or 20lb dumbbells around but none of them are in the racks or in obvious use by anyone else. A general walk around the entire floor will find the missing pieces laying about in odd corners of the weight floor, the yoga studio, the spin class, the basketball court, the strairwell, the fire escapes and, interstingly, the elevator. I collect them all and bring them back to the racks where they belong.

The staff are no doubt underpaid --even the trainers are paid a pittance-- but I would think the night crew should be walking through the gym to remove forgotten items from the equipment and clean up the obvious garbage. I don't expect them to heft around 125 lb dumbbells, but there's no excuse for not at least moving the 5 lb ones.