The Comic Store, the Motorbike and the Disney Mall

MORNING OF AUGUST 23, 2009

I was with Richard in a comic book store. True to real life, he was giving me a hard time about the fact that I no longer collect monthly comics (haven't in ages now). I vaguely remember the one employee at this comic store was particularly rude (imagine that). There was one area with a lot of fine art prints from various cartoonists. Many of these caught my eye, though they were, I thought, quite overpriced.

There was a rack of clothes and Richard looked at a pair of jogging shorts. He told me he could wear these when he went to the hospital. I asked him why he had to go to the hospital, and he explained that it wasn't for himself, but to visit someone he knew. Apparently some girl he worked with (an entirely fictional character) was having a sex change, and he was going to stay by her side as she recovered.

Next we sat at a table in the comic store and ordered food. A waitress came out and served us, and the next thing I can remember we were already getting our checks. Richard couldn't find his wallet and realized he must have left it in his car, so he went out to look for it. The waitress saw him leaving the store and ran after him, angrily screaming! She thought he was trying to dine-and-dash!

Next I remember leaving the store and getting on a motorbike to ride home (I don't ride motorcycles/motorbikes in real life, so I have no idea what this was doing in the dream.) The weather was extremely overcast, and I was in a hurry to get home as quickly as possible, before the rain.

Apparently the comic store had been located at the intersection nearest to my apartment complex, because that's where I was. In the dream I knew of a shortcut that would get me home even more quickly than the main road, and I chose to take it to increase my chances of beating the rain. I quickly realized, however, that I had forgotten the way on the shortcut and I got lost. I remember what felt like several minutes of riding the bike around trails in the woods, trying to find my way back to the main road.

I finally did make it back to the main road, but somehow ended up going to a mall instead of going home. The inside of the mall was basically an indoor Disney World. I met Richard, along with Jessica and Cailey. Conan O'Brien was taping a show in the main area of the Disney World Mall, and I stopped and watched a few minutes of it before walking on to check out other things.

At one point I saw a girl who was dressed like Jasmine from Aladdin and we made eye contact. Assuming she was one of the characters roaming the park, I snapped a picture of her as she walked by. Then I walked on a bit, and suddenly this box-shaped white robot, about waist high, rolled up to me and kept bumping into my legs and repeating some unintelligible phrase over and over. I assumed it was some obscure character from WALL-E that I simply didn't remember.

After a few moments of the leg-bumping and garbled mumbling by this robot, I began to feel unsettled--I couldn't get away from it! Then I noticed there was a baby sitting in a seat in top of the robot, and the unintelligible phrase was coming from the baby. Then an eastern Indian woman in traditional garb ran up and made the baby's robo-chair stop "attacking" me.

The lady explained to me, in broken English, that the robo-chair was a special stroller they had rented from the Disney park for the day. I looked beside the mother and saw "Jasmine" from earlier standing there. Then I realized it was the woman's daughter and not a girl playing Jasmine at Disney! This made me feel really embarrassed that I'd so freely taken the picture before.

After this I rejoined Richard and Jessica. We walked into a store that looked like just a regular store in a mall. There was a kitchen table displayed at the front of the store, draped in a fancy tablecloth. A loose thread from the cloth stuck to Jessica's clothes as she passed. I tried to let her know, but before I could she'd already gotten terribly tangled in it (to an impossible degree) and damaged the cloth in the process.

Finally, I remember looking back out the entrance of the store and saw a display of the Hill Valley clock tower from Back to the Future. There was a robotic Marty McFly hanging from the hands of the clock, yelling for help. In the dream I just naturally accepted this as a representation of the scene from the movie where Doc is hanging on the clock tower.

Suddenly the Marty McFly robot fell from the clock and broke apart as it hit the floor. Conan O'Brien, still taping for his show, ran forward and picked up some of the parts. He explained, "Well, first they closed Back to the Future: The Ride (referring to the real-life closing of the Universal Studios BTTF ride a couple of years ago), and now this breaks! I guess that's the end of the Back to the Future exhibit for good!" He was laughing and making jokes about it, but I felt sad.