I am going to help you avoid the nightmare I had last night.
Know this: The running numbers at the bottom of the copyright page in books is called a printer's key. It..."is simply a method of record-keeping that helps identify the book’s printing and, for some, year of printing a specific book, which may or may not be different than the original copyright date listed elsewhere on the page."
Not sure that would have helped, but maybe I could have used the Inception method to talk my way out of my nightmare if I had known that fact.
The dream started out in a harmless way. I was part of a class that was about to take a test. We walked into a large library and I felt at home because I love libraries. Especially large ones, like the one in my dream. Our task was to use a source book to answer questions on a test. Sounds easy, right? An open book test. But the level of difficulty grew exponentially when I learned that two hoovering school marms were going to go student to student to examine our work and I was the first student they would visit.
One of those marms looked like Maggie Smith playing her most disapproving character. You know what I mean. The smarter-than-thou role because-I-really-was born-in-the-1800s-and-I-have-seen-it-all.
I opened to the first page of the book and in that moment I knew what the first task was. Don't ask me how I knew. It was just one of those things that you can probably figure out or fudge your way out of if you didn't have people looking over your shoulder. The task was to decode the numbers on the bottom of the page. Six numbers. I suddenly realized that I forgot how to decipher them and I knew it was supposed to be something that every student learns in grammar school. Unfortunately, each time I looked at the numbers the page would change. So maybe I decoded one number, but then I would look at the page and the second number would change. It was so bad that I began to doubt that I knew where to find the numbers at all and asked for help. Maggie Smith looked at me with a sad look on her face. The other marm was nicer.
Now that I knew what they were looking for the codes got harder to break. I call them codes, but imagine that each number turned into a mathematical word problem. I am great with math if I have a formula to work with, but turn the question into a word problem and I freeze. To make it even more insane, I kept losing my place in the book and would have to look for the copyright page, which wasn't always in the front of the book!
At first I thought the page was hopping around in the book and then I realized that the copyright page was printed more than once in the book, and the numbers on the first page were the easier ones to decode. The copyright pages you found farther back in the book were progressively harder.
This I learned after I deciphered four out of the six numbers. I lost my page and couldn't find it again, but recognized the numbers on one of the more difficult copyright pages.
The fifth number to decode turned out to be a mathematical problem. One that would have required a calculator if speed was of the essence, and it was. I asked the nice teacher if my supposition was correct and she confirmed it.
For just a second I debated on leaving the page to look for the easier copyright page, but there was no guarantee that I would find it. The pages just kept changing. So I got up and walked around the table of students, looking for a calculator with an absent owner and when I found one, I began to type in the numbers to solve the math problem that would decode the fifth number. I even had a conversation with a concerned student who thought it would be nice if I left money on the table to pay for the use of the calculator.
I glanced at the Maggie Smith look-a-like and knew what was obvious. This wasn't even the main questions on the test. I hadn't gotten that far. This was just a simple primer, like writing your name on the test page and I was failing miserably. How was it that this basic task was not explained to me before? Why was I learning it now like some baptism by fire? And with that thought deeply embedded in my mind, I woke up.
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Usually my nightmares go something like this:
It's evening (almost dark) and I'm in my old neighborhood where I grew up. I'm out playing hide and seek with my friends and some scary guy in a purple cape tries to chase me. I run fast and get away from the scary guy, then my Mom calls me to come in the house. The end.
