Hippopotamus Handshake

He touched the butt

an average looking hippopotamus

I’m walking along a boardwalk at night. I see a group of people gathered around something. I get closer and eventually see there is a giant animal in the center. At first, I think it must be an animatronic hippopotamus, but I can’t tell whether it is living or not. I join the crowd of people circled around this hippo. A cartoonish white-gloved hand emerges out of the left side of the hippo’s torso. The hand is on a long black tube of an arm and it makes its way towards me. It stops right in front of me as if to shake my hand. I reach out and give it a handshake. The hippo jumps, rotating 180 degrees and lands so that its rear-end is facing me. Its arm immediately places my hand on its butt. The crowd erupts in a fit of laughter. I guess this is what the hippo does. Confusion overtakes amusement in my mind as I’m having trouble understanding what is happening here.

Some time passes and I’m trying to find a bathroom. I find a line of people that I assume must be the line for the bathroom, and it happens to be right next to the hippopotamus. As I’m waiting in line, the hippo directs its attention towards me and says, “Your phone is nearby.” I stare at it blankly. It repeats, “Your phone is nearby.” Then it reaches out its torso-arm again and grabs my hand. This time, instead of shaking up and down like a normal handshake it shakes from side to side. I mirror this movement and we match our rhythm so that its long stretchy torso-arm creates a perfect sine wave. After our handshake completes, the hippo turns around and directs its attention to a new target—a man that was standing behind the hippo while we were shaking hands. To my surprise the hippo charges the man like a raging bull.

It’s finally my turn in the bathroom line. I walk around the corner of the building and find that it wasn’t a line for the bathroom after all. It was actually a line for a photo booth. I waited in line all this time. I might as well get a photo while I’m here. I step inside the photo booth and I’m transported to a forest surrounded by nothing but trees. I see movement out of the corner of my eye. I turn towards the movement and see a ring-tailed lemur eyeing me from a tree. It starts spinning around like a dog chasing its tail. I mimic the lemur and start spinning around in a circle also, until I get so dizzy I fall over. My head hits the ground and I’m transported again. I’m back in the photo booth and a strip of photos emit from the slot—four shots of the back of my head.