sleep

Friday Firesmith – Two Gummies (Tee Aych zzzee!)

by

Somewhere out there in the vastness of the internet is a short video of me blowing smoke directly at the camera. How this, and little else survived my youth, is no mystery. I was not supposed to survive it. Voted “Most Likely to Die Before Age 21” in high school, no one expected me to live long enough to look back at some of the things I did, and some of the things that happened.

Weirdness did follow me. People would tell me they wanted me to go on a road trip with a group because something would happen. We found an empty tomb in an old cemetery in Macon Georgia and I went inside and took photos with a flash. A blue splattered drawing on the back of the tomb, along with an odd looking shadow that looked like something behind me showed up in the photos.

But I was point man. I would go first. If something spooky or supernatural was there I was going in. If there was a new drink or a new drug, I was there for the game. I was going to die young yet I was immortal.

Then, one day, without me realizing it had happened, I lived. And I aged.

Like the tottering veteran climbing over a fence to see the plane he once flew in battle, I am here now to report I am old. Not just old, but ancient.

Saturday, someone gave me a small jar of THC gummies. Over the counter light weight no real buzz help you get some sleep because you are old and cranky gummies. At the appointed hour, I chewed two of them, and went to bed. I slept peacefully.

At one in the morning I arose, having to pee, and couldn’t walk. I could barely crawl. I made it to the toilet but had issues standing, walking, and oddly, talking. It was a stroke. I was certain I was dying. I called an ambulance and was taken to the hospital.

“Two Gummies Dude,” is the way one of the guys working at the hospital described me. He didn’t make fun of me, but I could tell he thought I was some old geezer who got into some gummies and thought he was dying.

I held up pretty good until I started puking and that was when dignity left me.

In a few hours, I was okay-ish again. And had to find a ride back home. They told me I had not had a stroke, no heart attack, not so much as an ingrown toenail. I had a bad reaction to two gummies.

At high school graduation I swallowed a Quaalude and chased it with Jack Daniels.

I went to my regular doctor today. So now I’m wearing a heart monitor. I also had a brain scan today, and had some blood-work done, just to make sure. Three days after the event, I still don’t feel quite right. People are treating me like I’m fragile now.

As mundane as it sounds, I had a bad reaction to sleep gummies.

I should have died in an ancient crypt with a mysterious photo that was all left to explain what happened to me.

Instead, I got old.

Take Geritol,

Mike

A Soliloquy on sleeping soundly

by

I’m a night-owl. I have been as far back as I can remember. And all my adult life I’ve had to get up early for work, or if I was working an afternoon shift I got up early to swim before work instead of after. I’ve been retired for almost 6 years now, and I live alone, so I’m finally able to indulge myself in going to bed about 2 or 3 in the morning and getting up whenever, usually about 10am.

I live on the 12th floor of an apartment building and my windows face a street, a pool and skating rink complex, an elementary school about a block away, and the backside of a strip mall. Between kids, trucks backing into a loading dock, road traffic and people in my building and neighboring apartments moving around to start their day, there’s a bit of morning noise. Not conducive to sleeping late.

My solution was a box fan. It was my white noise machine. I put it on my dresser and turned it on high and it drowned out most sleep-disrupting sounds. 

Until it died two weeks ago.

I was staying with a buddy in his cabin in the mountains for a week, so when I got home I thought I’d try doing without the fan to see if I really needed it. It turned out I needed it a lot. The apartment building next to mine decided it was time to repave and repaint their parking lot. The arena is having some maintainance done which involves cutting metal with a grinder, but only in the morning. The lawn guys mow the City parks and nearby green strip at the crack of early. And there’s the unknown idiot in my building who likes to check his car alarm a dozen times on his way out.

Yesterday I bought a new box fan. Last night I got to bed just before 3am after turning the fan on high, and fell asleep with a smile on my face. I woke up this morning feeling great, no sleep interruptions at all. Happy, happy, happy. 

I looked at the clock on the headboard. 

It was 7:15am.

Thanks, Daryl!