Cast of characters:

• A Bob Barker/Drew Carey hybrid
• The audience
• Michael Jordan
• Me

Historical context:

• I used to loooove The Price Is Right when I was little.  When I stayed home from school sick, I would set my alarm for 10:00 am so that I could wake up and watch it.  I also used to get weekly allergy shots at the clinic in Columbus, WI, and while waiting in the waiting room for 20 minutes after my shots to make sure I didn’t die, I used to make my mom play The Price Is Right with me.  And I always made her play the same game… the price tag game.  I’d make two sets of four price tags with different prices.  I’d hide one set behind objects in the waiting room… a lamp, a piece of doctor’s office art, a chair, a plant, etc.  Then I’d give my mom the other set.  When I said, “Go!” she’d have to run around and put each price tag next to the object that she thought was that price.  Then I’d check, and if she had any wrong, she had to do it again until she got it right.  Bob Barker was the only ever real host of The Price Is Right.  Yes, I loved The Price Is Right.
• You couldn’t pay me any amount of money to get on a big-box cruise ship.  They are death ships, or ghost ships, in my opinion.  See “Carnival Cruise.”  Jess J. and I once watched a 4000-passenger death ship in Aruba sail off into the darkness with no sound at all.  Creeeeeeepy.
• I have no particular affinity toward Michael Jordan or Ford automobiles.
• I used to work a lot in Miami and kinda liked my airport transfers in big, fat, black Cadillac Escalades.
• My Prismacolor colored pencils were some of my most treasured items in high school.

Last night’s dream:

Yayyyyy!!!  I was on The Price Is Right!  I was standing with the host, sometimes Bob Barker and sometimes Drew Carey, staring out at the audience.  I remember that I was facing North (directions are always really important to me in dreams).  And low and behold, it was my turn to play the price tag game!  It wasn’t the mid-1980’s version of the price tag game that I would have expected.  It was a cheaper, older, 1970’s-ish version of the price tag game.  There were hand buzzers (like you use in Jeopardy) involved.  I don’t know why.  The colors of the game were peach and goldenrod.

I had about six price tags that I had to put on different items, and about three seconds to put the tags out until my time ran out each time.  When my time was up in the end, it turned out that I had priced two items correctly.  YAY!  Victory!  But what had I won???  Somehow, even I didn’t know at the time, because it turns out that I couldn’t see the items I was pricing.  They were printed on a piece of paper and folded up on a table.  I opened the first piece of folded paper to discover that I had correctly priced a set of Pentach (not Prismacolor) colored pencils at $175.  I then opened the second piece of folded paper to discover that I had correctly priced a super combo pack of prizes at $26,000.  And what did I win for $26,000?  I won a brown and tan Ford Explorer!  I won a trip for four to Miami to hang out with Michael Jordan at some basketball championship, complete with limousine transfers to and from the airport (they showed a video clip of Michael Jordan standing in front of the limousine at this point… he was excited to meet me)!  AND, I won a trip for four on a cruise ship in Europe!  YEAH!!!

That’s it, friends.  The end.