"But....but I walked away so slowly... to get help ....and I walked so slowly back, " the boss uttered in anguished tones as she describes a dream to me where a school friend threatened to take her own life as she walked into the bathroom, and when the boss returned with a teacher " it was too late". All my children give me a premiere viewing of their dreams. I am expected to interpret. Some are memorable, some frankly disturbing like this one. The boss dreams clever and true. She provides an interesting inside track, almost, to family matters. This one though is easily connected to a school drama, when such a threat was made by a girl who is, I suspect, being given a bit of hardship by the group. "Oh, she 's just looking for attention" one of the boss's friends said sagely, after this was said, but the boss mulls over the matter obsessively and tells me more than once that she and her friends are still, always, "nice" to this little one.
"Nice" is a killer word here. I had heard these girls talking with positive relish, as to how annoying and different the unfortunate one could be, though "still and all " they would never dream of being other than "nice"to her. I don't know about that. The girl seemed refreshingly herself to me, and was the boss's absolute best friend some weeks before. I know those female waters of old, and struggled often myself to swim in the slippery, deceptive deeps and shallows, as girl and woman. Being on the inside of an excluding group exerts a powerful glamour , an intoxicating poison. There seems to be a dynamic at work between the "nice" girls and the scapegoat which draws her to shipwreck , as surely as any sailor was lured to the rocks by siren call in the myth. There is danger here and self awareness is the only antidote..
The Boss slept little after the dream, was pale and drawn as she recounted it to me. . I advise her to talk to her class teacher, which she does. An approach is made to the child's family, and the girl in question fiercely reproaches the boss and her friends because she says "you made my mother cry". Ah yes, as I believe I may previously have mentioned, dear reader, sometimes its hard to be a woman. Anyway, the boss is much chastened by the entire affair and assures me shudderingly that she intends "never to talk about ANYONE to ANYONE ELSE in school, EVER again, and ALWAYS to treat everyone exactly the same". She hasn't missed the icy wind threading through this girlhood tempest then. Her dream has served its function, I think.
"Nice" is a killer word here. I had heard these girls talking with positive relish, as to how annoying and different the unfortunate one could be, though "still and all " they would never dream of being other than "nice"to her. I don't know about that. The girl seemed refreshingly herself to me, and was the boss's absolute best friend some weeks before. I know those female waters of old, and struggled often myself to swim in the slippery, deceptive deeps and shallows, as girl and woman. Being on the inside of an excluding group exerts a powerful glamour , an intoxicating poison. There seems to be a dynamic at work between the "nice" girls and the scapegoat which draws her to shipwreck , as surely as any sailor was lured to the rocks by siren call in the myth. There is danger here and self awareness is the only antidote..
The Boss slept little after the dream, was pale and drawn as she recounted it to me. . I advise her to talk to her class teacher, which she does. An approach is made to the child's family, and the girl in question fiercely reproaches the boss and her friends because she says "you made my mother cry". Ah yes, as I believe I may previously have mentioned, dear reader, sometimes its hard to be a woman. Anyway, the boss is much chastened by the entire affair and assures me shudderingly that she intends "never to talk about ANYONE to ANYONE ELSE in school, EVER again, and ALWAYS to treat everyone exactly the same". She hasn't missed the icy wind threading through this girlhood tempest then. Her dream has served its function, I think.
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