stealing strollers

I had a dream that I stole a green $800 stroller from some lady at a cafe, one of those bugaboo strollers. I just sort of sauntered up to it and carefully, quietly, gently walked away with it. After I stole it, I was rolling it around outside in a big parking lot, trying it out, seeing what the big fuss was about, and I accidentally knocked a bunch of little ceramic tiles off a street vendor’s table. The lady looked them over and said “oh you’re going to have to buy these now, they’re broke!” and I said okay, annoyed with myself. As we walked to the register, I looked through the rest of the box and said “but you have a bunch of broken pieces already! and you’re going to make me pay for these?” and she looked in and said “yeah I guess you’re right, never mind.”

It was a fairly boring dream, but it seems like there were symbols or messages or some statement of grand importance on those tiles, and now I can’t remember them. I want to know what they were, maybe it was a spirit telling me secrets about where to find buried treasures or something.

this dream reminds me of an exchange I had in Target recently. I bought a handful of items and my total came to $13.01. I looked in my pockets for change, but didn’t have any, so I just gave the bills to the cashier, resigned to carrying around $.99 worth of change. Then I looked down and saw a penny on the ground. yahoo!

“Wait!” I say. “Here’s a penny!” and I picked it up to hand to her. She stared at me, the bills in her hand, like I’ve just offered her the heads of three gorillas on a tray. Then she says, “I can’t take that.” And I looked at her, thinking I didn’t hear her right. “What?” I ask. She repeats, “I can’t take that penny.” And I thought for a second maybe she didn’t want to take it because she was one of those dumb cashiers who can’t make correct change in their heads and that whole extra penny, after I’d already given her my cash, just completely threw her off. I was prepared to explain a bit of math and change-making to her, but then I realized she hadn’t even punched the amount into the register yet, she’s standing there with the bills in her hand, looking at me.

So naturally I assumed she was speaking Mandarin and I said again, a little more clearly, “Here, here’s a penny, here…” and held it out to her. She said again “I can’t take that.” And I started getting annoyed, because it’s a fucking penny, not an atom bomb. I said “What? You can’t take this penny? Why not?” and not very nicely either.

She just shook her head, repeating, “I can’t take that.” Clearly I walked into the Crazy Nutjob Target and didn’t realize it. Instead of stabbing her repeatedly with my keys, I calmly said to her, “You’re not going to take it? What? I don’t understand. It’s a penny, you don’t take pennies anymore? What’s the problem here? Take the penny.”

She shakes her head, says, “No, I can’t take that penny. Not From You.”

HUH? Not from me? What the fuck is wrong with this woman? Did she see this penny fall out of someone’s asshole or something?

She’s looking at me like I’m trying to pull a fast one over her and I’m looking at her like the moron she is, wondering what the big deal was over this penny and what the hell is wrong with people and how on earth do people like this gets jobs in customer service anyway? The storm was gathering. I was two breaths away from tearing into this woman and releasing a litany of names when G managed to find another penny on the ground. He said, “Hold on, here I just found a penny, here!” and handed it to the woman. And she took it! She took the penny! She didn’t look happy about it, but she took it and gave me back my change. I gave her some more dirty looks before gathering my bag and leaving.

I have no idea what happened or what was wrong with that penny or that woman, but the end result is that we managed to get out of there alive. For that, I’m thankful.

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