The Case of the Stolen Pumpkin Money

In one dream from last night, I was walking into something like an arcade with another person.  I don't remember who he was, other than that he was 'well-known', maybe something like a celebrity, and that I also knew him or considered him a friend.  I guess we had decided to go to this arcade together, though the details of why we were there are hazy.  I don't know for sure.

What I do know is that I brought along what in my family we call our "Pumpkin Money".  I've written before that every Fall we sell pumpkins.  We set them out by the road and leave both a cash box as well as a Venmo QR code.  More people are starting to pay with Venmo these days, but still the majority of our sales come from cash.  The kids like to go out the cashbox every night, grab the money, count it, and then we just store it in a gallon-size ziplock bag.

That bag is pretty much where it stays from thereon out.  Many times when they end up spending some of their pumpkin money, either my wife or I pay with a credit card, and just note how much of their cash they used.  And then that cash just sits in the bag until someone needs cash for something, usually my wife or I.  If we need cash for something with a kid's activity, errand, or to pay someone in cash, and are short on time to go to the bank, we will just raid the pumpkin money bag preemptively, and leave an IOU for the kids.  One year, we took the IOU thing to what seemed like Dumb and Dumber levels:

Anyway, that is all to say that at the end of every Halloween season, we end up with a big bag of pumpkin money.

It was this bag that I walked into the arcade with.  I was showing my friend the contents of the bag, for some reason finding the money itself very interesting or wanting my friend to realize how interesting it was.  As we looked through it, I came across a $3 bill and either said or thought something like "Wow, see?  There is even a $3 bill in here.  Those are pretty rare!".

I set the bag down on a bench, and at this time my friend started walking off.  I guessed he must be wanting to check out the arcade.  But he had forgotten to take some money!  So I reached into the bag, grabbed some bills, and ran after him, leaving the bag behind.

I guess we had agreed at some point earlier that we should start with $10 each, because when he grabbed the money, I asked him, "Is that $10?"  He looked down at it, and then at me and said "Yeah, it's $10".  It was actually was not the right amount (though I can't remember it it as more or less, but I think more), but I didn't want to say anything about it so I let it go, even though it gave me a strange feeling.  He walked off, and I went back to the bench where I had left the bag of pumpkin money.

It was gone.

I looked up and saw a man leaving the arcade, and somehow knew he was the person who stole it.  I ran after him.  He noticed I was behind him, and got into a bus as I was coming up on him.  I then got on the bus and confirmed that he did, in fact, have my bag of pumpkin money.  At this point he got off the bus as it was pulling away and the doors were closing in an effort to get away from me.  I was also able to barely squeeze through the doors as I ran after him.  

What ensued was a series of car chases in which other people were driving me around in pursuit of the man with the stolen money.  He ended up in a very specific car which I told someone who ended up being my driver to follow, but in the end my driver followed the wrong car, and we lost him.  It was raining, dark, and hard to see, so while I understood how he followed the wrong car, I was really disappointed.  How was I going to get to tell the kids that I lost their pumpkin money?

I woke up sometime after that.

When I woke up, I didn't really think about the dream too much at first, as it seemed like just kind of a random dream and not really related to anything I've written about.

As I thought more, though, I did note that this was connected to Pumpkins, and those have come up both on this blog and on William Tychonievich's.  This money had come from the sale of pumpkins, and "coming and buying" pumpkins was part of that whole theme.  

Further, I have guessed that theft is involved in the story I am exploring here.  I had that dream of everyone's cars being broken into, and something seemingly important missing from each of them.  Cars are synonymous with Stones, maybe, and so it seemed to feed into this hypothesis of stories, information, etc., having at one point been stolen long ago by people with bad intentions.  I had even forgotten about the "Lizardmen High-Stakes Trading Company" of an earlier dream I had of a group of "Deer" that were after my pumpkins, and writing about this dream here had me go back an look at that.

And here, in my dream, was a theft that tied back to pumpkins, or some value derived from these pumpkins.  There seems to be something there, but I can't put my finger exactly on it.

That doesn't stop me from guessing with respect to some meaning.  Where would the fun be if we just left it at that?  So, while I can't complete a story from this, I do have some guesses to jot down with respect to symbolism or story elements, and they seem to add up to something.

Encyclopedia Brown has come up, so let's approach this as he would as we look into The Case of the Stolen Pumpkin Money (a suitable Encyclopedia Brown title, I think).

First off, it seems clear to me in hindsight that the friend I walked into the arcade with was not my friend.  The tip is that when I gave him the money and asked him if it was $10 while apparently knowing it was a different amount, my friend demonstratively lied.  Red flag, maybe?  I mean in any other setting in real life, I wouldn't care, but in the dream I am looking for clues, so this has to be one.  I gave him a chance to be honest about whether it was $10, and rather than confess I had given him too much, he said it was $10 and then proceeded to walk away from me once he had his money.  There didn't seem to be any pretense that we were now going to be still hanging out, as I reflect on this.  It is notable, I think, that when I went in pursuit of the bag, my friend was nowhere to be found, or I don't remember him in the dream after this.

Second, this friend may have been involved in the overall operation to separate me from the pumpkin money bag.  He walked off without getting money after I had set the bag on the bench, which caused me to hurry to catch him.  In doing so, I just grabbed some money from the bag, not the bag itself, and therefore left a small window of time where I left the bag unprotected.  Now, again, in real life, we would say I was dumb for leaving the bag there.  Why didn't I just grab the whole bag and go after him? In Dreamland, though, we can treat this differently, and in this hypothesis, one could argue that after seeing me put the bag down, my friend walked away in order to separate me from the bag, knowing I would run after him to give him the amount we had agreed on.  

Third, the time window I was away from the bag of money was so short that it is likely the man who absconded with it was been aware when my friend and I would be entering the arcade.  He was waiting for us, and thus watching the entire scene unfold, looking for the small window where I would be away from the bag and he could grab it.  Therefore, in this story, the thing would have been a setup between my friend and this man, who planned it all out in advance.  I would be led into the arcade with my friend, would have the bag of money, I would show the contents to my friend to verify this was the pumpkin money, and he would create the situation to separate me from the bag where his accomplice could then snatch it.

Sounds sufficiently paranoid and conspiratory for my purposes!  In Dreamland, guilty until proven innocent, I suppose.

OK, but if Encyclopedia were hearing all of this, he might have an opinion that changes how we should perceive this case.  Everything isn't what it seems.  For those who haven't read these books (I've now read a few cases with my youngest son recently, and I read them when I was younger), there is always some declarative statement by Encyclopedia at the end of each case, where given everything he has heard, he solves the case and makes some pronouncement, and then the reader is given a chance to solve it along with him before turning to the back of the book to get the answer. 

In this case, the book might end with something like:

"Well, those thieves may have escaped with a bag of bills," Encyclopedia Brown began, "but they sure didn't get your Pumpkin Money.  I imagine they will be pretty disappointed when they realize they've been duped!"

WHAT DID ENCYCLOPEDIA MEAN?

(Turn to page 104 for the solution)

The answer, of course, lies with the $3 bill in this dream scenario.  There is no such thing as a $3 bill.  I realized when I woke up, though in my dream it hadn't hit me that I was looking at something fake.  The fact that the $3 bill was emphasize so heavily in the dream - with me making special mention of it, and my dream vision settling on it for some time, leaves me convinced this is an important detail in the story.

If we pull in the analogy of the Pumpkins and extend them to Cars, and thus Stones (Cinderella's carriage was a Pumpkin, remember), I think we have the story here of the Bad Guys attempting to steal something in or derived from these Stones.  Thus, this is another perspective on that dream from some time ago where there had been a mass theft from all of those Cars, which included my own (or the dreamer's perspective).  My bag of Pumpkin Money ties the Stones-Cars, and thus that theft.

The Bad Guys walked away with what they thought was the real thing - the real Pumpkin Money - but the presence of the $3 bill suggests that they didn't.  They walked away with something not real, or a counterfeit.  

This then gets to the comment I gave to Encyclopedia above when he said they were "duped".  I could imagine the Good Guys, anticipating that a potential theft might occur, staged their own operation.  The counterfeit would have needed to be believable enough, and sold in such a way that they believed they were getting the real scoop.  In other words, it was according to plan that my "pumpkin money" bag was stolen.  Thus, the focus on the $3 bill in my dream may have also served as reassurance to me that it's OK, in that what was about to unfold in the dream sequence was just fine - it was fake money anyway and the Bad Guys weren't going to end up with what they think they got.  So, just relax.  Of course, my panicked response and ensuring car chase to get the money back would have only served as further evidence to thieves that they had gotten what they came for.

If we assume the Pumpkins, and what they represent, are "True", then that $3 bill could not have come from a transaction involving them (at least in dream logic).  Thus, the contents of the bag can in their totality be considered fake, although the fake would be very good and convincing.

I am not sure exactly how that ties in with everything, other than that it gives me some level of additional confidence that whatever happened in the past with respect to bad actors has all been considered and accounted for.  The Good Guys aren't without their own bags of tricks, I guess.

And, who knows, maybe that dream was supposed to be interpreted a different way, but I kind of like where that ended up.