Having "The Dream"

I was going to write about something else today, but then "The Dream" intervened last night.
I have to get this down while I can before the details dissipate into the ether.
I call it "The Dream" because it is seemingly universal. Almost everyone I know has some version of "The Dream."
Mine has a central core almost every time, though the details around it change. Last night was the strangest yet, but "The Dream" part of the dream was definitely there.
As best I can remember, "The Dream" began last night with me being back in college.
I was living with my college friend Jay, and the rest of my family moved in as well. This would have put the Jay I know out considerably, but he seemed indifferent when my eyes were moving rapidly behind closed lids.
Then I was in a store in a mall (I have no idea what mall) and, before too long, I was engaged in an all-out tank fight (we're talking Shermans and Panzers, here) in the mall parking lot. I may spend too much time playing video games.
Anyway, this is all sort of random, non sequitur dream stuff. Nothing to be alarmed about, except the incoming tank shell that I thought had killed me.
Turns out it didn't, and I emerged from the wreckage to go back to my apartment where my family was buzzing around tables and kitchen counter tops, having breakfast, and Jay was methodically preparing for his day.
I informed him of the tank fight, and how I thought myself dead, but was somehow alive.
Jay revealed to me that he had saved my life. He then produced cell phone video (a technology that didn't exist on the open market when we were in college. In fact, Jay had a pager) of a truck rolling down a mountain and exploding as evidence. It was a dream, so I accepted this as proof.
OK, nothing broken, not dead. Family in the kitchen. Time to go about my day.
And here is when "The Dream" hit.
I stared at the books strewn across my bed and knew that I was supposed to have read them, but I hadn't. In fact, I realized that it was quite late in the semester, and there was a class I knew I had but I hadn't gone to it at all. I didn't even know the building in which it was located.
In my version of "The Dream," it is always late in the semester, and I realize there is absolutely nothing I can do to save my hide.
In "The Dream," sometimes I go to the class and try to bluff my way through. Couldn't do that this time, as I didn't even know where the class was.
"The Dream" faded as I was making the decision between going to the registrar's office at the end of the semester and asking for a copy of my schedule, or just hefting up my L.L. Bean backpack (over one shoulder, of course) and making my way blindly around campus looking for the class.
That's when I woke up. Other variations have included me attending a final at a class I had never been to, but was on my schedule, or totally ignoring the consequences while moaning about the whole situation to my classmates all day. Fortunately, I do not have the version that I know at least one of my friends has where you show up to class in nothing but your underwear.
"The Dream" hasn't hit me in at least five or six years, so it was quite stressful. Add onto to it the prelude in which I thought myself dead and the stress meter doubles.
I awoke this morning to find my wife, not Jay, sleeping next to me, and my beagle, not my brother, draped across my feet.
Even upon realizing that it has just been "The Dream," it took me a bit to calm down.
After explaining the scenario to my groggy wife, she offered up a comforting "You still dream about college?"
"Well, yeah," I replied. "Don't you have something like that?"
"Not about college," she replied in her raspy morning voice. "I have dreams where we don't pay the mortgage and they take our house away."
"Did we pay the mortgage?"
"Yes, we paid it."
Shew.
I don't know what "The Dream" is trying to tell me. I only dropped one class ever in college, and, of the many boring core courses I had to take, I only skipped a few sessions here and there. From what I recall, that was always a good feeling. Class has been canceled today. By me.
All I can hope for is that it doesn't come back for another few years.
Oh, and Jay, I dream owe you for saving my life and letting my family move in. If I enter any of your dreams make sure you keep me to that. But check with me first, as I have some basic ground rules about what I will and will not do in dreams.