I often have strange dreams

Have you ever had one of those dreams that involve people and/or places that are both from your past and your present?

I have them a lot.

I usually don't remember them much when I wake up, just that it was weird.  

I often have weird dreams.

Last night I had one of those weird ones, and I actually remembered it!  But before I get into my weird past/present dream, let me give you some back ground.

Several years ago, before Sean & I moved out to Arizona, I worked nearly 4 years for a couple who owned a local clothing store.  (We're talking late 80's/early 90's here)  They not only sold clothing, but also shoes, active wear, accessories, health and beauty products and even wicker furniture.  One of the things we did was everything was hand written (usually by me, because I had the best handwriting!) From sales signs, to price tags to sales invoices.  Some days I did a lot of writing!!  Anyway, when we wrote up the sales invoices, we wrote the item name, product number if it had one, and cost then everything was added up on a calculator and the tax added.  

I never asked why they did things this way, I know some of it had to do with keeping tract of inventory, but we had a cash register that could at least add up the cost and include the tax.  In fact, after writing out the invoice, all the numbers were put into the cash register. 

Remember, this was about 1987 to 1991 in a very small town.  Technology was slow.  As a matter of fact, no one I knew had a cell phone and by the time I left, only some towns had cable TV.  

Yeah.  Very backwoods.

Anyway, the store was in Gt. Barrington, MA, but the owners, Phyllis & Sherwin, had their main residence in Hilsdale, NY and an apartment in NYC, where they would often go to visit family and friends, do some buying for the store and take in a Broadway show.   Many times, their friends would come up from "The City" to visit and would shop at the store.   Sometimes it was a small family, other times it was a whole herd of friends.

Gatsby's closed their doors for good around 1990.  Which was probably a good thing, because Sherwin (one of the owners) was pushing close to 80 by then, I'm sure.

So, back to my dream.  I had dreamed I'd gone back to MA to help out in the store, and naturally, as can happen in a dream, the store looked exactly the same.  I was at the register, which was at the front of the store right by the entrance which had display cases of jewelry and health &  beauty products.

Suddenly, a large groups of the owner's friends came in and were all gathered around the front counter, making me feel like they were a mob closing in.  Phyllis came out from the back office and they all scattered to go say hi to her, except for a couple of women who wanted to look at some Kiehl's  skin creams, which were a big hit with the ladies from "The City".  

Phyllis, Sherwin and the group, except for the ladies I was helping, left for lunch and I was left to run the store.  No big deal.  I'd done it plenty of times before.  

In 1988!!!

The ladies wanted to see a skin cream that was in a display case behind the counter, so I went to it looking for the particular cream they wanted.  

And here is where the dream gets really weird.

As I'm looking for this cream, I found it, then lost it.  I looked and looked in the case but it was no longer there!!  I apologized to the ladies, saying I was sure it was there because I just saw it, and to give me a minute to keep looking.

Then I sat on the floor and began thumbing through a Vogue Magazine.

Whaaat???

I told you it got weird.  

The ladies finally decided on what they wanted to purchase (I have no idea how they decided since I was sitting on my ass on the floor reading Vogue and of no help to them!) and I began to ring them up.

Except the store had advanced into the future!  They no longer wrote out sales invoices but scanned the price tags into a computer that I had no clue how to use.  So I  had to call up the sales girl, who I didn't know, and who had miraculously appeared out of no where, to show me how to ring up a sale.  As she was showing me how to run the computer,

I woke up.

The end.