The other night, I had a scary dream. It was not scary in the traditional sense. There were no monsters, I wasn’t late to a test and naked, I wasn’t trapped anywhere, and I didn’t have all my teeth fall out. It was scary in a much more subtle way.
In this dream, Kim and I had heard of some condos that were getting good press. Supposedly, it was your typical setup with condos above and retail at street level, and one of the businesses was a restaurant with rave reviews. It was somewhere in North Portland, pretty far north. We thought we would check out the restaurant, so took a trip up there. We stepped in to the restaurant and it seemed kind of dark and small — more like an older inn or pub, with long wooden benches next to warped wooden tables. After looking around a bit, we decided not to stay. The door we took to exit should have taken us back on to the sidewalk and street. It wasn’t quite the same door we entered, but one further along the same wall. Instead, this door took us in to the center of a mall.
This mall we suddenly found ourselves in was huge. And in typical mall fashion it was also very open, barren, and white. This was when Kim decided she wanted to check out the housing. It seemed they were not *above* the mall, but *part of* the mall. There were stand-up signs and sandwichboards hyping the new condo units. Come upstairs and see the model condo unit now! I was feeling very hesitant at this point. We have a good house, and I didn’t want to sell it to move in to the mall. Nor did I want to deal with the traffic in getting from far-North Portland to work (down in Wilsonville.) Not to mention lack of yard and garage!
But Kim was convinced. She followed the signs and took the escalator up to where the condos were supposed to be. I decided to stay behind in the food court. After what seemed to be a very long time, I got worried and thought I would go check what was going on. At the top was an old lady set up with a sort of bouncer-like duty. Beyond her was a moving walkway (like a horizontal escalator) and I guess her job was to take tickets or write down contact information (for sales leads, I’m sure) of people that went to look at the condos. She was busy talking to people and I had no interest in tickets or getting on a mailing list or whatever — just finding Kim. I cut past her and sped down the moving walkway. Almost immediately from behind me, I heard her chasing after me. “Come back! You didn’t get your hand stamped! You need a hand stamp!”
At the other end of the moving walkway were a whole bunch of people milling around. I guess they were waiting to see the model condo unit. I managed to lose the hand-stamp lady and after much searching was eventually able to find Kim. I woke up not too long after that.
I am not sure what is more scary — the dream situation itself or the real-world fact that I am having bad dreams about real estate. Have I sold out (or bought in) and become a yuppie?
