Those of you who have bothered to spend some time reading this blog know I have no agenda. Whatever comes up comes out. My only goal has been to stop being so lazy that I can’t even manage to put thoughts to paper (or computer screen) at least once every thirty days. If there has been any method to this monthly madness, it has been the fact that what happens these days sometimes parallels what has happened before and prompts me to look for the possibility of new lessons in the old or old lessons that apply to the relatively new. What I hope I have avoided for these past nearly-five years is doing nothing more than engaging in pure nostalgia – recently described as “…being a tourist in your own memories.” Well, this time I am doing exactly that. So, what bit of nostalgia comes to mind?

These days, I sit in a university classroom and watch incredulously as students sit on the front row directly in front of the professor and go to sleep. A few do so regularly. Now, I know sleep happens, but if you knew sleep happens to you – repeatedly — would you continue to sit right up front? I don’t get it. One day, noticing a student beginning to nod, I remembered having to pretend to do the same.

I once was part of the cast and crew of a silent movie made by the students and teacher in a filmmaking class. The storyline was the teacher’s idea. Originally, he planned to cast the film with students from the acting class, so he had us sit in on one of them. The acting teacher asked us to join his students in some class exercises, so we did. I must have really gotten into it because, when we got back to our classroom, our teacher announced we weren’t going to use anyone from the acting class and that I was to play the character around whom the story centered. I believe his idea for the story probably arose from how he saw his students, who we were in relation to where we happened to be.

We were a group of black, white, and Latino boys from high schools all over the country; we were considered “underprivileged” students who supposedly showed signs of “potential”. We had been recommended and had applied and been accepted for a summer program called Yale Summer High School, held on the campus of that university’s divinity school. The juxtaposition of us being there most likely struck my teacher as an idea worth exploring, leading to the movie we made.

The story we told is about a student nodding off in a class during a teacher’s lecture and experiencing vivid dreams about everything the teacher is discussing. First up was cultural elitism and Western imperialism as personified by Yale itself. I walk up to what appear to be the gates of that august institution and as I am about to enter I am suddenly blocked by an embodiment of the Ivy League: a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed student wearing a navy-blue, monogramed blazer and a look of utter disdain. I remember how different the classmate playing the part was from the character; he was a kind, gentle kid.

The teacher moves on to other subjects, war being one. I remember that dream sequence involves my reacting to seeing President Lyndon Johnson go by me in the back seat of a black Cadillac; a classmate wore an LBJ mask.  That was one of the scenes we shot in downtown New haven during rush hour, and seeing Johnson’s face go by in that car made more than a few heads turn. The same happened when we shot another scene there, this one requiring me to run into the middle of rush-hour traffic looking bewildered. I do so wearing nothing more than a long, black wig and a loincloth. Why? Because the teacher is talking about the history of Native Americans, and in the dream I am a Native aghast at what the modern world has done to the land.

The greatest challenge for me was the fish scene. That’s right; I had to play a fish. I don’t remember if the lecture turned to the environment or endangered species or what. I only know that when I was told I would have to be thrown into a lake, I was not sure the movie would ever be finished. I told my teacher I couldn’t swim and he assured me I wouldn’t have to. He said the water was shallow enough for me to stand if I needed to, but he needed me to stay under for a while.

Students in the art class created the fish, making it large enough to cover my head and upper body. When we got to lake, I had second thoughts again. I was used to water that moved, waves crashing onto a beach. This was still-water, stagnant to me, and partially covered by pond scum. I was cajoled into being a trouper and carrying on with the task at hand. The scene starts off with me being my human character one moment and, in the next, I am a fish writhing on the ground. To save my life, my classmates pick me up, carry me onto a small pier, and toss me into the water.

I never saw the finished movie until months later when some of us returned to New Haven that December for a weekend reunion*. The movie was as weird as it sounds. I sit in class these days and wonder if any of the sleepers are dreamers having as much fun as I once pretended to.

*I arrived home from that reunion on the night of Sunday, December 10, 1967 and took a taxicab from the bus station. The driver was listening to news on the radio. Earlier that day, a plane had crashed into a lake. Otis Redding was dead.