Here at Rocky Mount Academy, both the students and the faculty “dream big.” However, dreaming big doesn’t just apply to our dreams of the future, but also our sleeping dreams. After having my fair share of weird dreams this weekend, I decided to write about the weird dreams of RMA. Keep reading below to hear the strange dreams of a few students and staff!

Sadie Blackshear, 11th Grade

Sadie was the first person to give a dream for this article and her dream set up the article to be an interesting one. When Sadie was in lower school, she had one very specific recurring dream every year. In this dream, a dragon would be terrorizing the school and her class would have to come together to escape the dragon. The dragon would lay an egg in the courtyard that was going to hatch at 3:00pm and if the students didn’t escape by the end of the day, they would die. In the dream, Sadie would also worry that her parents wouldn’t make it to school in time to save her. Her class would hide under a bridge by the creek and her parents would always drive up in a red convertible and save her in the end. However, this dream did not have the happy ending it seems to have, because Sadie and her parents would drive off as the egg hatched, but no one else made it out of the school and they all died. That’s some terrifying dream symbolism about school if I’ve ever heard it.

Nan Barnhill, 5th Grade

When I asked Nan to tell me about a weird dream she’s had, hers took a much happier turn than Sadie’s. In Nan’s weird dream, her father found a basket of puppies on the way home from work. He brought the puppies home to his family, and they were all ecstatic. Nan and her siblings were already having lots of fun playing with their new puppies, but then after a few days, they realized the pups had superpowers! This resulted in Nan taking flight with one of the puppies and having a sweet, sweet dream.

Mr. Tucker, Head of Upper School

I went to Mr. Tucker, sure that he would have some crazy dream to tell me about. There was not a specific dream that came to mind when I asked, but he did tell me that he most often dreams about his duties here. If the SAT is coming up, he dreams about administering the SAT. If it’s AP exam season, he dreams about making students fill in their bubble sheets. Those all sound more like nightmares than dreams to me. Poor Mr. Tucker.

Vivian Rogers, 10th Grade

We’ve all had weird dreams about going to the doctor, and Vivian is no exception. In her dream, she was walking to the doctor with her mom, but it wasn’t just for a check-up. She had an arm and hand growing out of her head! She went to the doctor with the hopes that he could help her, but the doctor had no idea  as to what he should do, so Vivian had to leave the doctor with the a new appendage. However, in typical Vivian fashion, she made the most of the situation and gave high fives to everyone she saw on her way out! When she woke up, she took a second to make sure it was all really a dream and she did not in fact have a new arm. Hey, but if she did, it could’ve been pretty handy.

Davis Epps, 8th Grade

There’s the stereotypical dream of accidentally showing up naked to school, but Davis’s dream takes a slightly different turn. In his weird dream, Davis was in the Arctic wearing nothing but a pair of cowboy boots (chilly!). If this wasn’t confusing enough for him, he is suddenly circled by penguins and a king penguin steps out and blows a tuba. Upon the sounding of the tuba, an albino tiger jumps over the penguins and attacks Davis. I’m not sure how these events came together in Davis’s dream, but they sure make for a good story.

Mrs. Lehnes, Upper School Science Teacher

Mrs. Lehnes didn’t have a specific weird dream to share with me, but instead a specific event that recurs in lots of her dreams. In many of Mrs. Lehnes’s dreams, a big wave, or a tsunami, will come from nowhere and completely engulf everything around her. When it pulls away, everything is gone and Mrs. Lehnes is the only thing left. I’m not sure if this ends up being scary or peaceful for Mrs. Lehnes in her dreams.

Dakota Compito, 9th Grade

I went to a ninth grade class to see if anyone had a weird dream that they wanted me to include in this article, and though many of them said they had weird dreams, they turned me out of their class to go find Dakota because they insisted he would have the best story to tell me. I will go ahead and let you know that I was not disappointed. In Dakota’s dream he and his fellow classmate, Chris May, were at the lake. They were enjoying a fun day when a whale suddenly washed up on shore. When he was telling me about the dream, Dakota put it simply, saying “it was weird…just because whales don’t belong at the lake, you know?” Though this was weird, dream Dakota didn’t think twice because he knew they needed to save the whale. He sent Chris to get a bucket of water for the whale and Dakota tried his best to sustain the whale while he waited. Chris returned, but instead of water, he came back with a huge container of “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” and began to spoon feed the whale. That’s the end of it, but I can’t even fathom how Dakota’s brain visualized that scenario.

Ava Bella Blevins, 3rd Grade

As I’ve talked to many people about their weird dreams over the past few days, I’ve concluded that as you get older, your dreams get weirder and more concerning while younger kids get the sweet dreams! While Dakota was having dreams of his classmate feeding a whale margarine, Ava Bella was having dreams of unicorns! In her dream, Ava Bella was riding a unicorn on a journey where she encountered a leprechaun. I think I’d like to have this dream!

Jacob Watkins, 12th Grade

Knowing Jacob, I knew that he would have something strange to share, and he definitely lived up to that expectation. Jacob’s dream starts out on a plane. As typical on a plane, a stewardess begins making her rounds to see if anyone wanted something to drink. Jacob asks for a Coke and the stewardess walks away to go get one, but as soon as she walks away the plane starts to go down. The plane crashes and Jacob seems to be the only one to survive. He looks down and sees the stewardess dead on the ground. Not only that, but the Coke he requested is in her hand. Jacob, who keep in mind that this is his dream-self and not his real-self, simply reaches down to take the Coke out of her hand, cracks it open, and begins walking around the island he is stranded on. While enjoying his Coke, Jacob realizes that he is on the show “Lost” because he sees all the cast in crew. He goes through the entire episode in his dream, but he chose to not bore me with the details of the episode (or maybe he is just keeping the spoilers a secret for the next episode). When the episode ends, the “Continue watching?” screen that you see on Netflix when you’ve been binging shows pops up everywhere around Jacob. Mentally, he clicks to exit out of the screen, and then he wakes up from his dream. I’m not sure what this dream means, but maybe Jacob should cut back on Netflix or switch over to Pepsi.