Batch

12-27-2012 -- [This goes back to some old dreams from growing up. Had hundreds of dreams like this, but almost never anymore. But I did this morning!]

First bit I can remember (might not even be same dream) I am at a repair shop where they have been looking at my scooter. I have already paid $170 in advance, and am worried about how much more I might need, because I'm out of work and really don't have any money. Thankfully, the guy has finished all repairs, and was easier than he though, and he gives me $70 of my money back! Yeah!

Soon I am a teen or even a little kid, downstairs at Sears in the Buena Park Mall. This is in the old days, before construction and things, back when the candy counter was downstairs. I am in the portion of the store where both the escalators and a stairway came down, near the pay phones and perhaps restrooms (can't remember the layout as well after so much time). There was more to this early part than I can remember, but I think I was here playing video games with Nick. (Full size machines, not the Atari games.)

At some point, I went up to the ground floor (the other floor at Sears was a lower level), and then was thinking of going back downstairs to meet my friend again. Problem is, I am standing at the escalators, ready to head down, but they've blocked off the down escalator. There are a couple of people running down the up escalator, but with my bad leg, I don't think I'd have much luck doing that, anymore. But I really want to get down there again.

Suddenly I remember the staircase also going down that is just around the corner, so I walk over to it and use it. I get halfway down, and I reach a section of the stairway that is damaged, and much more difficult to cross, but I manage without too much trouble. As I get down to the lower level, I find myself looking at a low planter of sorts (only about two bricks tall) with very light brush / landscaping in it, and among the landscaping, balloons, balloon hats, and perhaps my shows and socks (which for a moment may also be made of balloons.) I start gathering my stuff together, and I have got one shoe and put it on.

I find a basic helmet hat I had made, and somehow Nick had either made or found a cool shark balloon that he had somehow merged with the helmet hat to make a cool, more advanced version of Mark Byrne's shark hat. I am still trying to find my other shoe, and deciding I don't really have any need for any of the other balloons right now. I hear voices coming down the escalator, and find there was nothing wrong with the down escalator, they had just blocked it off because it was near closing, and they didn't want anymore people going downstairs.

It turns out it is store security on the escalator, and they are griping and complaining about having to clear out the store, and troublesome customers and the like. Very soon they are pressuring me to leave. I explain I am gathering my stuff (my current gray towel as well as shoes and socks), and I am still waiting for a friend, but it is changing from Nick to Rosemary [my current real life landlord] and some of her family. But they are pressuring me, so I take the escalator upstairs again. When I get upstairs, half the lights are off, so its kind of dim, and obviously the store has already closed.

I approach the northeast corner of the store (my northeast, since my sense of direction was off, due to a bad compass, the entire time I lived in Buena Park) and though I am not being pushed out the door right this second (the store security is still clearing the lower level) I exit a set of doors right by the corner, but facing Stanton, and find it is twilight outside, and it is snowing. I am pretty sure it is about 9 pm, and Sunday, and most of the mall closed hours ago, and Sears at least an hour ago. [In the summer it would be possible it could still be twilight at 9 pm, but in the winter it would have been pitch black.]

I thought Rosemary was right behind me, but she doesn't come out for a while. I look around for a bit, and eventually go looking for her car in the parking lot, a green Dodge Dart-type vehicle (think Chris V.) but a convertible with the roof down. I manage to find the car, and Rosemary's cell phone in it. I grab the cell phone, and with still no sign of Rosemary, start walking back to the doors I exited from.

Oddly I find the same set of doors unlocked, so I pull one open and walk back in, planning to head back to the escalators, but I hear people coming, and find I'm being yelled at by both security and store management, so I head out the doors again hoping that I didn't get myself in big trouble, didn't trigger an alarm, and thinking to myself that if they don't lock the doors they can't really blame me for coming back in.

The store just has too many doors, and I have no way of knowing for sure where Rosemary will come out [the building had three sides facing the parking lot, as well as one side leading into the mall, and I think each side had three sets of four doors, so that's a lot of exits], so as I worry of missing her, I think of calling her on the cell phone I took out of her car. The problem is, it is a fancy advertising model, oddly shaped, and styled with the Mountain Dew logo on it. Both the talk and the off buttons are hidden within the logo and hard to find. Further, I realize I don't know her phone number, and I can't find it in the phone's contact list, because she doesn't call herself much. [My mind never thinks of the fact that she can't answer if I am calling her on her phone, anyway.]

I give up on the phone, but about that time I spot her, walking through the parking lot, almost at the car. I think she has two kids with her, and I am guessing one of them is Lexi, though she looks thinner than she is now. But I am realizing if I am a young kid, she probably hasn't been born yet, and it is probably Cheryl instead. I don't want to miss my ride, so I start hurrying out toward the car, but Rosemary has already got it started up. She is heading toward me, approaching one of the little traffic lanes in the parking lot, but before I can reach her, she starts to turn.

Because I am a kid, I haven't met her yet, and so she doesn't recognize me or pay any attention when I call out to her. I wave at her, and she just waves back. I try and call out I have something for her, and reach into my jacket pocket to bring out her cell phone, but the male kid in the car (probably Jeffrey) cries out "He's going for a gun," and Rosemary floors it and is gone. Guess I can't get her cell phone back to her. I call after her, but it does no good. Guess I have to walk home.

So I slowly start walking along the side of the mall, heading for the May Company end, when I find myself being forced by traffic out to La Palma on an odd curving exit that didn't exist in the real mall parking lot. I also find myself turning into Lennier from Babylon 5, but a quite young Lennier, probably a mid-teen. The traffic is too heavy for me to find a way to cross, and there is the slightest hint of the Circus, like when Circus Vargas would use the parking lot.

Suddenly I find myself confronted by Michael Garibaldi, and we are in the bowels of Babylon 5, which is being constructed in the Buena Park Mall, and Garibaldi wants to know what I am doing here! Me, I'm just a Minbari wandering the mall parking lot, walking home in a small Earth community in the 1980s. No wonder he didn't believe me! He's being kind of threatening, when suddenly big parts of the structure around us seem to almost be collapsing down on us, with razor-like metal claws slicing out of the metal inches from our heads.

We're dodging around, trying to keep both our heads while Garibaldi is screaming something like "They promised me this had been taken care of!" and as things finally seem to be settling, and I have survived intact, I glance at a couple of sets of claws, and kind of flip them further forward, where they lock in place, and secure the beams they are parts of. As I have done this, more and more of the claws are kind of clicking into place, and it begins to seem the entire problem with things collapsing is they never locked these things in place.

We soon find ourselves in a mall-style utility corridor, but in the station, not in the mall, and we're walking to Garibaldi's office, past a couple of Londo's Centauri dancers. Somehow I say something kind of flirty to them, and wildly out of character for a Minbari, and dead silence falls for a few seconds, giving the scene a chance to finish, and finally everybody (including me) breaks into hearty laughter. The others are thinking it is just odd enough that it might be left in the episode, and I am thinking to myself that this acting gig is kind of neat, even if I am a teen again, and I might want to do it as a career.

But moments later, it is back to a real space station being built in the parking lot, and Garibaldi is escorting me out a door back to said parking lot. As we step out, though, I hear the 'dut dut dut dut dut dut dut dut' sound of bionic power being shown, and Sasquatch from the Six Million Dollar Man goes running past. Lou Ferrigno's Incredible Hulk falls out of the sky like he is completing some 100 meter jump, and the two start fighting on the back of a flatbed truck. Garibaldi thumps the back of the truck as a signal to the driver, and he starts to drive off with the behemoths still fighting on the back.