Upside-Down: My Crazy Dream

I just woke up from the weirdest and craziest dream ever! I was with “my friends” – current friends and random people from my past – about to go to a jazz dance class at a community center. We were waiting to leave in a classroom, which looked like my high school but was possibly in a dorm building on my old college campus. Some moments we were all outside watching the tennis team film a dance routine in muddy puddles. Then a few of us were in a different classroom. It was dark, and we were sitting at desks in the center of the room. I felt the building sway so much that I could look out the window straight down at the street. It looked like Pasadena outside. The building wasn’t so much swaying – more like the top part of the building was on a hinge or was rocking back and forth. It didn’t seem connected to the rest of the building. A teacher walked into the room carrying another teacher’s baby. The building swayed again, and I asked my friends if they could feel it. “Look at Angelina’s water bottle!” I said. The water inside clearly indicated the building was moving drastically. “It feels like the building is about to flip over!” “That’s because  it IS!” screamed the teacher. We tried to run for the door as the classroom plummeted to the ground. Suddenly, we were outside and safely on the ground, looking at the top half of the building, which was actually standing right side up and was surrounded by bodies, shocked students, and emergency personnel. I could see students lying in the stairwell with laptops and cell phones out, tweeting about their safety. I stood there crying, thinking about friends who were probably still inside and saying, “I feel so… lonely.” My college roommate stood next to me and didn’t say anything. A passing stranger patted me on the shoulder and awkwardly said, “There, there. It’s okay.” As ambulances started taking people away (I didn’t see any dead bodies being moved, so I suppose everyone survived), I saw my current roommate. She rushed toward me and started telling me how her best friend’s dad is okay. She was just with him at his house and was supposedly taking care of him with alcohol wipes. I interrupted her and said, “Do you see this building? I was INSIDE when it fell! So I don’t really care about your friend’s dad right now.” At that point, someone said it was time to search the rest of the building for survivors. My roommate and I went upstairs to the second floor, which looked like my junior high school, and we heard someone tell us to search the music room. We opened a random door and almost stepped on people. Everything in the room was still right side up, though, and people were still in their desks. The students were little children, like 7 years old. My roommate didn’t know what to do, but I started going to each one, asking, “Are you okay? Does it hurt anywhere? Does your head hurt?” The first child was okay and was able to leave. The next child said her wrist and knee hurt, so she wiggled around until she was seated comfortably to wait for a paramedic. Her “identical twin” – sometimes they looked the same, sometimes not (the first girl was Indian, and the second girl was pasty white with glasses) – was okay. I then realized the parents had come to school that day, because the next person was the twins’ mother. She was at least the first girl’s mom, because she was from India. She appeared to be okay, too. I don’t remember if anything else happened after that…