Dreaming Away

Woke to my alarm clock registered (enough decibels to raise the dead) for terrorist attack or a nuclear explosion.

The problem is that it takes this kind of alarming sound at full volume to bring me back to consciousness after a long sleep. All through my life, sleep and dreams have always been deep, sometimes reaching the depths of the comatose, sleeping through 4pt to 6pt earthquakes while living in California through the eighties. The apartment coming down around us as my girlfriend at the time, panicked and, as always, dramatizing the event like a B-grade actor in a lame seventies film.

Once awake, though, the soul comes alive, and no matter what the hell is happening, self-preservation prevails, scrambling outside while paintings fall off the walls and the ceilings begin to crack. Though my girlfriend was, and probably still is, a drama queen, if she didn’t wake me that morning, I’d have slept through the entire earth-shaking affair.

Remembering a most chilling incident, house-sitting for my boss with my girl friend, shaken awake to a terrified whisper….

“There’s someone in the house.”

Crawling on the floor in the dark, peering around the corner, not seeing anything at first then, a shadow, and the sound of boots on the wood floor of the kitchen…there was not only one person in the house but two or perhaps three.

The kitchen is next to the door to the garage, where my boss, an amateur carpenter, had tools to the worth of thousands.

Crawling again to the front window, their truck was parked outside, as these thieves conveniently stacked my boss’s tools in their vehicle, casually and without fear.

My girlfriend was already on the phone talking to a 911 operator:

“Alright darling, don’t panic! What ever you do, please stay on the phone. Now, tell me your address. Good girl, tell me what is happening now?”

“But we have children in the house! You need to come now, please…”

Watching through the corner on the floor on hands and knees, I could see they were satisfied with their takings. The smaller one of the three, said something that was just out of earshot, but it sounded like,

“Let’s have some fun.”

These thieves, a coven of criminals, all laughed and it was at that moment that my stomach decided to reject everything that had been put into it in the last 24 hours.

While retching, I heard: “ON THE GROUND!”

One of the threesome attempted a getaway over the back fence, hitting it hard, ending up on the ground, handcuffed.

The sound of him smashing against the fence, an extremely loud scrambling bang, at that point I knew that it was finally over.

Interestingly and thankfully, the two young children, aged two and four, slept through the entire harrowing experience.

My boss’s tools were saved and his children were safe, but the question always remains:

What if my girlfriend hadn’t been there at the time?

Would I have slept through the entire ordeal, possibly causing, inadvertently, something terrible, an event much more sinister?

In fact, this is useless speculation, the pointless “what if’s” of a past event.

Sleep is a wondrous, natural and necessary aspect of our lives, mine, unfortunately or otherwise, is all consuming…

Thus I continue to put the alarm at nuclear or terrorist mode because it would be a shame to miss life while sound asleep…dreaming away.