At dinner the other night, my oldest daughter described a dream she had.

"Daddy, you were driving us to school and it was a normal morning like any other morning. I stepped out of the car. You drove off. I started to pull on my backpack and noticed everyone was looking at me. I looked down and I was completely naked, except for the big bow in my hair. All I could do was hide behind my backpack."

Before she could conclude the dream, her younger sister piped up, "I had almost the exact same dream! But, I was in class. I had my shirt on, but when I stood up to answer a question my pants were gone!"

Then her little brother chimed in, "I dreamed I was Lightning McQueen, and I flew to Disney World and ate popcorn with Captain Hook."

I'm not sure my son grasped the exact theme of the conversation, but I do know my two daughters are growing up, because they've officially started the dream…or nightmare depending on your point of view. I didn't have the heart to tell them they'd have these terrorizing subconscious little ditties for the rest of their lives.

I've been out of school since 1992, and I still wake up in a cold sweat due to a variety of educationally induced nightmares. Sometimes in my REM state I'm the only guy in my physics class who didn't know about the exam that counted for 99 percent of my grade.

Other times I've lost my schedule and accidentally skipped an 8 o'clock class all semester that I had to have to graduate. I've had plenty of the old standbys like the ones my daughters recently experienced. I've been in English, calculus, and various other classes wearing nothing but sandals and a hat. Why my subconscious felt the hat and sandals were necessary, I'll never know, but I'd rather be naked than have the dream that consistently tortures me more than any other.

It's my last semester of college. I need 19 hours to graduate, and I walk into my first class feeling energized and ready to go into the real world. My professor calls the roll …Lawson…Lee…Macken zie…Morgan…wait! No Maddock? It's the same thing in all my other classes, too. I ask my professors what's up, and they each tell me in that cold, unfeeling professor voice with the Indian accent, "I have no record of you."

"What?" I ask. "I registered… I did everything right! I'm not some lost little freshman…I'm a fifth year senior! I have to be on that roll!"

Turns out I did do everything right…but pay. This dream is so realistic and so scary, because it actually happened to me my final semester of college. Luckily, I was able to pay my tuition and beg my way back into all my required courses, but the memory lingers in my subconscious and rears its ugly head much more often than I'd prefer.

While I'm dreaming, I'd love nothing more than to walk into class wearing just a pair of sandals and a hat as long as my name was on the roll, but that's not how nightmares work. Unfortunately, my girls are finding out there are far worse things in the educational process than homework, and there's no summer break from the subconscious.