My wife and I were traveling. Astonishment took me when I realized we were driving a light green 1978 Mercedes Benz 280 SEL. Solid, dependable, comfortable, the car was like a tank. “That’s the same car we had in Germany,” I told my wife.

She didn’t notice. We were rushing and had stopped for shopping at Costco. With dream time, we leaped from talking while entering the store to being at the checkout register. A male manager rang us up. We were still actually shopping as that happened, with my wife hustling up with last minute additions.

Medicine and food were being rung up. The manager was urging us to hurry because it was time to close. We were going to be the last ones. My wife put a bag of food our box of purchases. Picking it up, I told the guy that we wanted another one, so ring it up again, and I told my wife to get one more. As she carried that up, the manager rang up the final bill: $610.

The total shocked us. I suggested putting things back and wondered how the total had become so high. Nothing expensive was in the box and there wasn’t a lot.

But we ended up saying, “Okay, let’s just pay and go because time is running out. We need to get on the road.”

End of dream.