Mall Santa Dream

I had a very bizarre dream last night! It was highly incongruent, as most dreams are, and I probably forgot many details before I even woke up, as usual. But there was one moment, a moment so ridiculous, that I think I woke myself up laughing aloud – and I immediately composed a text to capture the quote. I drafted it as a reply to my most recent text, which happened to be a co-worker. Thankfully I did not hit send, because (as you’ll see) that would be hard to explain.

My dream took place at a two-story mall, where I was restricted from access to a certain corridor because the mall security guard insisted that Santa was coming, so we could not go down that corridor. At this point, I remember heading in the opposite direction of the Santa primarily because the mall security guard just had an unlikable presence. Literally, a repelling quality. Therefore, I was happy to change direction into the opposite path of him.

I am not sure how much time elapsed, either in real time or in meta-time inside dreamtime, a la Inception (“just because a concept is unnecessarily complex does not make it cool”), but as I was heading out of the mall, we were all stopped. The security guard yelled to the crowd that no one was permitted to enter or exit the mall for three minutes, because Santa was arriving. I remember shrugging in apathy. In comes the mall Santa.

Not the Mall Santa in this dream

What you are probably visualizing for “Mall Santa” is what I was expecting, too. What appeared instead was anything but the visual I had expected.

It was a robot on wheels, like a competitor on Robot Wars. Its head was that of a dog (like a Shih Tzu) but its head was distinctly left of center of the robotic block on which is set. It was either poorly assembled or intentionally placed in a decentralized spots for an inconceivable logic. The head itself was animatronic. Overall, it looked very hokey by today’s standards, but it probably would have been very impressive 10 years ago. Except the animatronic head. That movement was outdated by 30 years, like a reject from Showbiz Pizza.

Its deep voice carried a lot of reverence though. And Santa (apparently Santa was its name, and completely unrelated to St. Nick) addressed the crowd assembled for the exit, not his appearance. “Let us be blessed,” Santa began. “WHO!” The crowd responded in unison, “Who?” I remember thinking at the time how appropriate it was that we got to ask "who" since I literally had no idea who this was or what was going on, so I joined in the response.

My parents took me to Showbiz Pizza for my 8th birthday

Next, Santa said, “MOO!”  I responded, “Moo.” No one else in the crowd joined in that time though. I was not sure why. After a moment of dead silence, Santa looked directly at me and said, “God bless you, my cow.”

Everyone remained silent, seemingly bewildered between what had just happened and what could happen next.  Casually, Santa backed up and pivoted to move in the opposite direction of the assembly of onlookers and mall patrons, presumably none of us knew this Santa either, and then the crowd began filing out of the mall.