I woke up at 5:52am with tears streaming down my face. The last sentence of my dream was still in my mind. I hastily typed it out while squinting in the early morning light.

(When I read it back at a more pleasant later hour, I actually burst out laughing. I sound crazy! Dreams only make sense when you’re in them! But I’m sending this email anyways…)

In my dream, a tough Israeli professor gave us an assignment to explain why kids are like candy. We were presenting it over zoom. A student who was oddly similar to my real college classmate Shira went first. “Parenting is like a Starburst*. It's hard to bite into, but inside there's sweetness.”

Wow, that was good. How would I ever top that?

It soon became clear that I wouldn’t. The presentations got worse and worse. I was last, and somehow, maybe due to the fact that I’d thrown my essay together at the last minute (super unrealistic!), it was about toys instead of candy.

“You did it wrong!” barked the professor.

“Hey,” I protested, “I don’t even eat candy! All I eat is protein and vegetables!” (This is actually true.)

I still had to present, so I made something up on the spot (also accurate). My voice choked up as I spoke.

“Parenting is like candy because… it’s like a mixed bag of covered chocolates because… you don’t know which you’re going to get, but everyone thinks that theirs is the only kind there is, so everyone else thinks you’re doing it all wrong.”

I was sobbing. I was also going to get a good grade on this, for sure.

And then I woke up.

That's the dream. For real! I have the timestamp on the Google Doc to prove it:

I could tack on a moral here - we don't choose our children or their challenges, don't worry about what people think, you're definitely not doing it all wrong - but I thought it would be more fun to turn it over to you.

Armchair psychologists, self-proclaimed intuitives and all wannabe dream interpreters… what’s YOUR interpretation? Reply with your psychoanalysis, I’ll share some good ones.
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*ps - Starburst, according to Google images, is apparently not what my dream self thinks it is. And nobody on my family chat has any idea of what it could be...

Does this even exist in real life?? Candy experts, reply and solve the mystery!