Culture Shock Dream

When I woke up, my first thought was to think, What pill? We just want to pay for this pasta salad. My second thought was, What an aggravating dream! What’s up, brain, that you can linger so long on something so stupid? But my third thought was to see the accuracy of the dream; so I replayed it a few times to remember it in the morning.

We were on our way to someone’s house and dropped into to a supermarket to pick up a dish to take with us. Stephanie was famished too, and had an eye to pick up something she could eat in any case. We quickly grabbed a pasta salad and bread and were directed to the other side of the store to pay. But the cashiers were gone, and in their place was the manager, alone at a large desk filled with papers.

Oh, hang on a minute, she said. To complete the transaction, she had to hook up a machine. Pretty stupid, I thought; but they must be understaffed because of the recession. The manager pointed to a nest of wires and bags on the floor by the window and told me to find the plug marked MULV ONE and connect it to the red socket. I kneeled by the mess of wires for a long time, not finding the plug, while she insisted, MULV ONE! MULV ONE! It took a long time but I finally found it, only to have trouble locating the correct red socket, because there were a dozen red sockets with varying degrees of redness. Eventually I closed the circuit. The manager, still seated, now told me to find the green plug and a socket marked TI. When I paused for a moment, considering the friends waiting for us nearby, she tersely explained why we had to do all this: Triage, she said, which I assumed was a reference to desperation measures resulting from the recession. So I went back to work, sorting through many bags and buckets of plastic links, looking for a green plug and socket marked TI. After I succeeded, there remained one final task, which was to find the component labeled FAMILY MEDICINE. As it turned out, the letters were hidden behind its toy shutters, so this took some time. Ultimately though, all the circuits were closed, everything was in place, and the machine produced a piece of paper which the manager tore off in one hand while she held a pill in the other. Then she pronounced, You are not entitled to this pill at this time.

What pill? I thought, waking up in total exasperation. We just want to pay for the damn pasta salad!

But, of course, this is what culture shock feels like.

Sophie apparently had the same dream, except in hers, Tinkerbell came to life and set off bombs all over the place. I think France was involved.