Dream of: 22 October 1996 "Record Game"
Some other people and I were visiting a fellow at his home. The fellow told us that he had invented a game which he would like for us to play. From somewhere he had acquired a large number of old 45 RPM records, and it was these records which he used in his game. He gave each of us two stacks of records, all in their picture sleeves, with each stack containing perhaps 20 records. He then gave each of us a book which gave the values of the 45 RPM records. Not all the records were listed in the book – only those of any value. The idea of the game was to go through the book and figure out which records were listed. Whoever finished first, without making any mistakes, was the winner of the game.
I began looking in the book for the records in my stack. I quickly saw that only about half the records were listed, and those had values from $3-$5 and all the way up to $10. As I looked I recalled that I also had quite a few 45 RPM records which I had collected, and how it had been my custom not to collect records worth less than $5. But this fellow had apparently put all his records together, both the ones of little value and the valuable ones. I wondered if he even knew what he had, and I wondered where he had obtained so many records.
The game didn't interest me that much; actually I found it rather boring. Some of the pictures on the sleeves of the records however were interesting. Most I had never seen or heard of. I noticed one rock group
called "Supertramp." I had heard of this group before, but I had never listened to anything from them. I also saw a record by Alanis Morissette. This was the only record that I thought I might like to hear. I knew she had only recently become popular, and although I didn't keep up much with newer pop singers, I liked her music.One fellow sitting near me suddenly said that he was finished. Realizing that he might win the game, I cautioned him that if he had gone through the list too hastily and missed someone, he would automatically lose. My ploy worked because he looked worried, and began going back over his list. That gave me some more time.
As I finished up, I suddenly realized what the fellow who owned the records had done: he had cleverly used us, by playing this little game, to get some of his tedious work done. It was probably his intention to sort out the valuable records from the worthless ones, a job which was no fun at all. But by turning the task into a game, he would now be able to take our results, and quickly sort out the valuable records, without having to laboriously search through the book for the record values. I thought that had been a pretty smart trick.Copyright 2001 by luciddreamer2k@gmail.com
