Night of December 17, 1982. Friday.

This is an old dream from mid-December 1982, which, for some incomprehensible reason, popped clearly into my head last night, practically from “out of nowhere”, so I thought I would look it over. It mostly involves only myself and my brother-in-law Bob as characters.

We are to enter a store after hours. It is a larger store that exists in real life on the north-side of La Crosse. For some reason, we have to steal Christmas ornaments from inside the store (mostly near the checkout aisles to the north end it seems) and a few Christmas trees from a fenced-in area outside on the south end - it seems to have to do with “rescuing” or recovering alien surveillance devices or some such to get them back to the orbiting spacecraft. I have no idea how we are to get so much at once, but there may be a trailer involved (my brother-in-law has his station wagon there on the west end in the parking lot). I mostly remain in the store on my own. I see televisions on in the store and there are the scenes of the weird vegetable-puppet-looking creature from "Cold Hands, Warm Heart" - an episode of “The Outer Limits”. There is no danger, just a vague focus on a “mission” of sorts. The dream does not seem to have a resolution or even an ending, just me wandering around and trying to work out which ornaments are “alien” and which are not. I seem to be getting some sort of subtle help or at least clues from the vegetable creature that just sort of waves her/its arms around on the television screens or closed-circuit monitors. No one else shows up even though the lights are all on, so I guess there is no alarm or we (or the aliens) had deactivated it.

I do remember also, a scene of snow and cold and riding in the car while Bob drives, and feeling pretty good about the “theft” or “rescue” or whatever was going on.