I’ve mentioned at times my utter inability to remember dreams. I know that I dream — or, at least, I feel that I’ve dreamed. I’ve been in the dream state while awake, which is a very strange place to be. But, by and large, my dreams are walled away in my consciousness and inaccessible to me.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I woke up this morning with a vivid memory of a dream.
I went in a GameStop. Well, technically it was a GameStop. It had originally been an EB Games, in particular a store that was either built or remodeled in the 2000-2002 time frame.
EB stores of that time had a distinctive “look.” The stores had a certain LEGO-like look. The walls were solid colors, blue and red. The overstock area was a solid green. The cashwrap area was a bright yellow. Primary colors. LEGO colors. After 2002, the designs toned down the LEGO-ness; the cashwraps stayed yellow, but the primary blues and reds were replaced with grays.
The store, in my dream, was a LEGO-styled EB Games.
Someone who was working in the store knew me, though I didn’t know him. We talked, and while I don’t know what the conversation was about I do know that the conversation made me feel a bit anxious.
Suddenly, my old boss — my district manager from North Carolina — was there.
We stepped outside of the store. He wanted to talk to me about coming back to work for the company.
I don’t remember precisely how the conversation went, but I do know that I was quite vehement that I wouldn’t, and the conversation became heated. As much as I loved working for EB Games, I despised working for GameStop; one company favored original thought, the other wanted passive drones, and I’m too much of a free spirit to have ever fit comfortably in the GameStop mold. But more than that, I simply wasn’t willing to work the stupid number of hours that GameStop required of its managers.
There was one other oddity to the dream, which I won’t mention. Just someone surprising, because he had nothing to do with EB Games ever.
The dream upset me. There was nothing wrong with the dream. It was actually nice to revisit some aspect of the past in some way. But I couldn’t imagine any reason why I would want to return, and I don’t know why I had to have a conversation about the matter.