Since I haven't had a memorable dream in ages, I'll write about one of my recurring childhood dreams. It's one of my favorite, and had it from age 7-10 or so.

It was a mall. The mall of my dreams, with the perfect design and the best shops a kid could want. It was a small two-story building with only a dozen stores, but I didn't ask for much. The entrance was in a corner, so the shops branched out to the sides in a "V" shape when you got in. Straight ahead were a set of escalators, and there was something intangibly awe-inspiring about their placement. The whole place was a pleasant brown - if you can imagine that - with wood paneling and a smooth tiled floor. Sometimes there were plants, but mostly it was the atmosphere: calm and soothing, yet somehow bursting with possibilities.

But the deal-maker was the pie shop. It was usually on the left branch, with a row of swivel-seats lining the counter. My dad would take me over and I would spend minutes staring at the selections. The bubbling anticipation was the best part of it all, and with each new dream I became excited the second I saw where I had started. As for flavors, blueberry was my favorite, but my dreams usually ended before I took a bite. In later iterations, the pie shop was on the second floor, as though my sleeping brain had somehow made that complex leap up in spatial navigation. But more and more, the shop wouldn't be there anymore, or I would spend too long looking for it and woke up before finding it. It would be terribly disappointing each time, but I never lost that initial excitement of seeing the mall.

Towards the last years of these dreams, a girl would show up and be the new focus. She had a blonde ponytail, white t-shirt, and sweatpants, and had the face of a mischievous angel. It was no one I knew in real life, but rather a sort of all-American girl that was both innocent and devious (remember, I was 10). She would always be on another floor, or across a hole in the second floor; one time, I tried to swing across like Tarzan to get to where she was. But I could never talk to her or get her to come over to me. And the peculiar thing is, I don't recall really being interested in girls in real life at the time. But there was just this mystery, this unknown encounter that stood right at the brink of my dreaming psyche. I wonder what I would have said to her.

posted by Larry at 11:58 PM