Being late/running late is a very common theme in dreams…Being late in a dream as an image of finding it difficult living up to your own demands or the demands of others…When we dream that we are late or that we are about to be late, it is often because we are fighting a battle to achieve more than we can actually handle.
https://michaelrolsen.com/dreams-late-mean-dream-interpretation-late
It’s a pretty common dream, all right, so give Batiuk points for being relatable for once. I know I’ve had dreams of this type. The naked-in-public kind of dreams, too. Batiuk and Ayers do a pretty good job at giving this scenario a dreamlike feeling. The hallway appears infinite, and eerily empty. And while this is almost a universal dream premise, I bet Tom Batiuk hasn’t had this dream in ages. At this stage of his career, the only demands he probably has to meet are to submit one comic strip per day. It doesn’t have to be especially well drawn, or funny, or make sense, or follow a narrative. Just a piece of content, to fill space on a newspaper comics page or on a website.
Well, my two week long nightmare of having to deconstruct FW every day is ended, and on deck is guest emcee Epicus Doomus! Take it away!
Son of Stuck Funky 
Suppose Creepy Les had this dream? You just know that when he burst into his class the teacher would say “Where’s your homework? Why are you late?” and he would say “I was rehearsing an oral presentation of my homework! Dog! D-O-G!” The class would burst into applause and the teacher would hand him a Pulitzer.
Batiuk’s whole life appears to be this as a comic strip waking dream- high school follows forever, there is no escape.
Funky has dreams about being back in high school. Les… Les thinks he’s still there when he’s awake.
That traveling green shirt, man, it gets around.
In BatGag’s fevered nightmares he’s rushing to the post office in early January to wrap up yet another year of FW, but it’s a holiday, which means he’ll have to devote another fifteen minutes to it the next day. Much like the entirety of FW itself, it’s kind of tough to figure out why this one even exists. I assume he came up a few Sunday strips shy and just made something up on the fly.
“Okay…everything’s fine…I spent the half-century since I left high school eking out a working-class Ohio lifestyle by selling mediocre pizzas, I’m on my second marriage, my son is a worthless ingrate, I’m living with alcoholism, my arteries are more clogged than the L.A. freeway system at rush hour, and my only friend is the former high school nerd who won’t stop writing books about how his first wife died from cancer.”
So what you’re saying is his life is marginally worse than it was in highschool?
It think Funky’s life has improved since then. He no longer sees Machine Gun Moore five days a week.
Remember that strip where we were reminded that when he thinks of himself, he sees the kid he used to be? He never actually did leave high school at all. No one in the strip does. It just follows them around into the Great White Void.
Being late appears to have been this week’s out of left field theme.
And late middle-aged awake Funky even entertains the thought that he might still be in high school? Why would that even be a thing?
High school is where he met Les Moore. That alone would give anyone PTSD.
I think Batiuk is on point with this one. I’m 47 years old, was never an uber-diligent student, and I still have nightmares like this.
See also https://xkcd.com/557/
Interesting that FW employs that very same “fade” transition between the last two panels!
In Westview the school bell is the same as the tornado siren?