Morning of April 3, 1985. Wednesday.

I am in an unfamiliar store that sells miscellaneous items. (I get the impression the cashier is oriented east of me). I am not fully sure what I am going to buy. There is an association with smaller paint-by-number kits (that come in sets of two paintings each) as well as bathroom supplies (such as shampoo).

The main focus is on puzzlement over my wallet and the money I have. It is not all actual money at first and eventually there is no "real" money in bills.

Instead of twenty-dollar bills (and other notes), which is what I thought I had more of, the cash is actually cut out comic strips of "The Wizard of Id" (that are slightly larger than normal). This of course is quite embarrassing but surely the "money" is not realistic enough to be associated with the idea that I am trying to use counterfeit money deliberately. There is no drama or eventual threat from anyone else based on my actions or possession of "funny money". I mostly just search through my wallet without finding any real money and become quite puzzled. I believe there is also some Monopoly board game "play money" which has appeared in other dreams as such. I am trying to remember why I put all these cut out comic strips in my wallet or maybe I did it absentmindedly.

Although there may be a subtle association with paper money being related to conflicts regarding Id and Ego (my sister Carol always pronounced "Id" as "I'd", which brings to mind contractions for "I had", "I could", and "I would"), I am inclined to believe it is a typical example of dream distortion in representing the dreaming process itself.

I have never had a dream about wanting to buy something and seeing the (paper) money as it should actually be (coins are different - they usually seem quite amazingly accurate and seem to metaphorically represent having sense/cents). I do not believe that having distorted paper money (sometimes printed on only one side in-dream) is in itself symbolic at all just as many things in dreams are clearly not symbolic but sometimes indicative of the dreaming or waking process itself (again, such as an elevator going up meaning you are in the waking stage; nothing more, nothing less). Because the dream is not real, the money is not real and so is not rendered in-dream as realistic in appearance - almost like an attempt by a part of the sleeping mind to trigger lucidity. It is not because of the mind being unable to render print or numbers or letters a certain way, as I have had numerous dreams with very realistic comic book pages (including of those titles actually published in real life) and other printed materials.

Again, it is different with many other things as many objects and events in dreams are very vivid and realistic. Paper money (or plastic in Australia these days) is one of the things in my experience that seems deliberately rendered oddly or wrongly in dream scenarios. However, if one stares at money in real life or studies it for a long time (especially on different days over time), it is likely to be rendered a bit more realistically in-dream because of the Tetris effect.