Voenix Rising

I dreamt last night I went to Walgreens to pick up a prescription. This in itself is odd because I haven’t used Walgreens for scripts in years because their service (at least in Denver) is so uniformly appalling. But yet here I was, and not unusual for them, the pharmacy wasn’t open even though a half dozen employees were milling about inside.

I was near the front of an ever-increasing line of people when they finally started accepting customers. At first they had only one window open, but when I was finally at the head of the line they opened a second. A large, at first friendly, black clerk asked for my name. “Oh yes, I just saw yours here,” she said, while rifling through a huge pile of bags strewn across the counter. “I’ll need to see your ID,” she said.

I opened my wallet and could not find my driver’s license, even though I’d just had it out a second before. My wallet is a huge mess, so I ended up pulling everything out in an effort to locate it. As it took longer and longer for me to find it, I could tell the clerk—not to mention the crowd behind me was getting annoyed. I finally found it and handed it to her. She took it to the back counter, turned around and asked, “What kind of Canon printer do you own?”

I thought, WTF? “What kind of Canon printer do I own? What does that have to do with picking up my medication…and how do you even know I have a Canon?”

“They’re running a promotion and I need your information.”

“I don’t know,” I said, becoming increasingly annoyed that I’d been there for such a long time and still hadn’t gotten what I came in for. “Pixma something-or-other. I’m not interested. Just write down ‘customer refused to provide information.'”

“I can’t do that, she said. You have to tell me what model it is.”

“I DON’T FUCKING REMEMBER!”

At this point I’d caught the attention of the woman standing at the window next to me. She gave me a wry smile.

The clerk then pulled something out from under the counter that started shining lights into my eyes. I noticed it had “cognitive assessment” and “memory recall” buttons on it that were lit up. “What the fuck are you doing?” I said.

“You’re acting impaired. I can’t release your meds without verification that you’re capable of taking them as instructed.”

“Because I can’t remember the model number of my printer, something that’s none of your damn business to begin with? I never consented to a medical test!”

The woman to my left now got involved. “He’s fine. He just doesn’t remember his printer model number. Hell, I don’t even know what kind of printer I have!”

The clerk then turned the device on her.

“Now you’ve done it,” I said.

At that point I woke up.

This followed an earlier dream where I was walking around North Beach in San Francisco attempting to take pictures with my iPad! (Even though I had my old Pentax SLR with me. I think it was out of film.)

I guess this is what I get for having had such a late dinner last night.