Mondays on Memory Lane: CARRIE BRADSHAW DIDN’T LIKE MY BIRTHDAY GIFT – I haven’t written down one of my dreams in years, but this crazy one happened to me yesterday afternoon.

It begins ~ I am giving a tour on a double decker bus on a lovely day in New York. During lunchtime I remember that I have to go to an actors audition and hurry there. In hurrying there my touring guide clothes morph in to casual clothes and I arrive at the audition which seems to look like an office I had once worked in.  I say a few lines and get the part but I am told that is not enough, I need to get more people to come to the audition. I hesitate but tell the man I think I can get my group of friends to come. He tells me he is pleased with that and the part is mine if the others will accept the parts too.

I rush home to an/my apartment which astoundingly looks like the apartment from the TV series “The Odd Couple” except it is empty. No furniture, nothing on the walls. I hurriedly walk around the apartment looking for a telephone to call my friends for the audition and stumble into a room filled with vintage 1970’s electronic equipment, all of which is playing. A fancy stereo turntable, an old fashioned TV, an old clunky VCR and a music DJ’s soundboard – all of them interconnected by thick cable wires. (Kind of like in the ‘Saw’ movies.) I am confused why they have all been left on and disconnect them one by one and leave the old telephone connected and call my friends, only to be reminded by them that I have to attend of their birthday party’s in a few hours.

Being in the empty apartment, I have no gift and head out the long corridor and out the door to an outlet store. In the store I am met by an over ambitious sales person trying to make a sale and my sales resistance seems to have weakened, I find my self telling him that it needs to be a “Sex and the City” themed gift. He anxiously shows me an array of show related items but I say they are not good enough or unique enough. I remember saying I needed four of the same gift (which makes no sense since the party seemed to be for one person.) The salesperson shows me this strange tall iron box which looks like a periscope kids used to play with, equipped with mirror and all. I am fascinated by it and told it is a very rare one of a kind piece. Satisfied with the provenance, I buy it and 2 similar gifts and also a fourth separate gift.

I rush to the party and the home of my ‘friends’ has the atmosphere of a nice California villa but inside was a New York City bar. At the bar sat my four friends  very happy to see me – ‘the girls’ Carrie Bradshaw, Miranda Hobbes, Samantha Jones and Charlotte York – the cast from “Sex and the City” (the later years). Upon seeing me they rush to greet me and I proudly reveal my birthday gift for the birthday girl which turns out to be Carrie/Sarah Jessica Parker. I tell her that I also got her the parts at the audition which she isn’t so pleased about but I have the audacity to say to her “hey, but at least you’ll be working in something you know!” She accepts the idea but is instantly distracted by the gift. At first she is thrilled with excitement which then turns to horror. “Omg, do you realize what this is? Do yo know who made this?!” Dumfounded, I thought ‘great’, I bought a rare art treasure for the elite Carrie.

“No! This has been made by an ancient American Indian tribe, this is from a tribal ritual. I can’t keep this! It is cursed! You have to return it!” Disappointed, I take the art piece back staring at it. In the meantime, Miranda Hobbes loves her gift and Samantha is filled with joy at her gift (which I don’t know what it is) and she gives me a great big kiss. Charlotte just seems to be lost in the background. Carrie’s upset voice reemerges “you have to return this, do you realize what this is?!”

Downtrodden I leave the party with the rejected gift in hand and all of a sudden I  am laying on an outdoor staircase in the sun, sunning myself with the ‘art’ salesman, telling the salesman, “Carrie didn’t like her gift, but she will reluctantly appear on the show.”

The next voice I hear is that of Perry Mason and I wake up in a familiar bed. I have fallen asleep watching retro television programs while in a pizza haze after a long days work.

 

The moral of this story: “Don’t eat four slices of pizza after having had no breakfast – you pass out in a pizza food haze in front of your TV and wind of buying bad gifts for Carrie Bradshaw. “