Voices

I enjoyed getting back to a dream that was just pure play. I was a bit of a mall rat as a kid, so perhaps that is where the setting came from. Only regret: not looking for the video arcade! Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid Lucid #43: The Flying Mall Rat I am in a mall walking through a jewelry store out into the main hallway. I have to maneuver around a family coming toward me. For some reason I employ a fancy (and physically impossible) spin-move to get around them, twirling all the way around and sliding several feet across the floor. It suddenly occurs to me that I need to remember whether or not I am dreaming and in this case it feels very obvious that I am. I walk out into the main hallway and see that the mall is three stories high. There is mall music coming over the PA system. It sounds like it is three or four girls harmonizing, and they are singing about breaking up with some schmo. They are actually quite talented, with sort of a sound like a modern-day <PERSON>. The lyrics and the tune itself are utterly generic, but since it is my dream, I can be honest with myself and admit that I find it catchy. I am feeling excited and playful so I leap up onto the railing of a short stairway and grind down (in other words, ride down the rail on my shoes.) I want to see what things look like from higher up, so I hop up to the second floor, grab onto the railing and swing myself over. I then perch my feet on the railing and leap upward across the gap to the third floor's railing. At this point, I remember the Christmas carol Task of the Month. For some inexplicable reason, I decide that "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" is a Christmas carol and try to see whether I can remember it. In spite of it being several years since I heard it, the first verse comes back to me without any trouble, and I go swinging and leaping around the mall singing it, vaguely worried that I am singing in waking life. From what I read in the TotM thread, this is a very common worry. I spend a few more minutes having fun soaring around the mall. As I reach the end of the main hallway, though, I notice the entrance to a movie theater. I land on the ground floor and step inside the theater, curious what is playing. The theater is packed and I am surprised by how many people I recognize from my own life. I walk through the crowd for quite a while, greeting old friends and acquaintances as I pass by them. The lights in the theater are not dark yet, but everyone returns my greetings with whispers, as if they do not want to talk over the movie. I happen on one friend, S, who appears to be the size of a child in her seat. For some reason I feel like I need to make her look "right" and tell her "Oh, you are much taller than that." She starts stretching out until her height seems correct, but now her head has gotten distressingly skinny. I start getting flustered and fixated and it is not long before I wake up.