Do you get sleep imagery like this?

I am sitting at a desk in an insurance office having just been hired. Sitting next to me, on my left, is Sally Fields. She is to administer a test to me though I have got the job in the bag, she tells me. Her job is to give me tests.

Across the desk and to my right (remember, Fields is to my left sitting with me behind the desk), leaning towards us is Jeff Goldblum who has an appointment with Sally Fields and who intends to tell her a story or a joke, I am not sure which.

My task, she's said, is to add up a series of three sets of numbers on this of pale gray test sheet. The numbers, as I can see, are all different sizes and they are printed in different fonts, some bold, some a paler shade of black and thus a good deal harder to read due to their thickness as well as size, others are easier to decipher but they all are crammed together and therefore real hard to compute.

An additional muddle is that there are three differently colored numbers on the gray sheet presented to me. Some are black, some green and some are in white ink on the gray. All are in variable fonts and each are crowding the next.

A further complication has it that the adding machine is a calculator with tiny buttons set so close to the surface of the thing that it is easier to hit a wrong figure than a correct one.

She tells me to add up the numbers in sections A, B and D and when I get their sums noted add the three sub-totals together to get a cumulative total.

Jeff Goldblum begins his story as I start to add.

"It seems," he says, "that there is this boy on the beach pulling a burrow with empty saddle bags on his back."

Warming to his story Goldblum looks around the office to include everyone. He smiles conspiratorialy, as if he has a delightful secret.

"The saddle bags are made of mesh." He continues. "His task, this boy, is to pick up all the coconuts on the beach and place them in the mesh saddle bags.

Goldblum's eyes, if you do not know this, are big and protrude enough that he was perfectly cast in the remake of "The Fly" which originally had Vincent Price's large probiscus in it.

"He is" Goldblum says, "to empty the beach of coconuts and deliver them to the grocer on the boardwalk above the beach."

Goldblum takes a deep breath and laughs for a moment, he sits back and slides into a slouch and he goes on.

"Ok, the boy proceeds to fill up the saddle bags with coconuts and he has just about filled them both to capacity but as the bags have each been expanding with their volumes the increasing loads enough that the boy sees, to his chagrin, that the meshes have stretched enough for the coconuts to pop out of the bags and land back on the beach."

Meanwhile, as he tells the story of the boy's frustration, I am trying to add all the numbers in the three designated sections but my fingers keep hitting the wrong keys or buttons and I come to realize it is impossible to make an accurate sum.

I have only managed to get a few numbers entered into my adding machine when I stop and listen to the story. Then when he gets to the part where the boy is stuck in his quandry, I try to interrupt Jeff's story by turning to Sally Fields to ask for clarification.

"Excuse me, Sally." I say, "Am I supposed to add all three colors of numbers at the same time?"

"What?" Says Sally.

"And another thing. Is it ok if I use a pencil to enter the numbers?" I ask her. "You know what I mean, turn a pencil around and use the eraser to enter the numbers? Can I do this?"

Sally Fields looks at me blankly, with an empty grin on her face. Clearly she is preoccupied with the story being told not with my concerns.

Jeff Goldblum looks on with interest, but he will not be interrupted and continues with his story.
"So...so... so, you see, Sally. (she turns back to him with the same vacuous grin) The boy can't get all the coconuts in the saddlebags in just one trip because the bags keep popping out the last few coconuts that he packs in, they pop back out on to the beach, again."

He chuckles and shrugs his shoulders.
"Well, what can he do? The poor kid is beside himself with befuddlement and he keeps looking up at the sun, to see if he has enough time in the day to finish the task and then back at the coconuts on the ground, trying to figure out how to solve his problem.

Goldblum laughs again. "... but he keeps picking up the last few coconuts and trying again to cram them into the saddle bags...."

It appears that I have already got the job so it doesn't matter if I add the numbers correctly, and I know this.
I do know that I am supposed to just look as if I know what I am doing. Adding and adding and listening to the impossible story about the boy, the coconuts and the burro and whatever else Jeff Goldblum has to talk about.

There doesn't seem to be an end to the two dilemmas in process.

The other thing is that the boy is getting paid for his labors no matter what number of coconuts he delivers or when they are delivered.

What does it all mean?