Tonight's One-Third by Jay Squires Story of the Month contest entry |
Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of language.
Tonight’s “one-third” is going on forever. And I’m scheduled to be here for it. As alert witness. As scribe to my sanity crumbling like dried, wasted putty that can no longer hold back the demons.I flick my wrist to see 3:55 on my Fitbit. Rolling to my back, I stare at the ceiling for better than an hour. Listening to the rain sweep across my roof. Swath after swath. This rainfall will bring us out of our drought. Sayeth Channel Seventeen’s Chief Meteorologist Alissa Carlson. Never do they announce her as Alissa. Or Alissa Carlson. Always Chief Meteorologist Alissa Carlson. If I passed her on the street and said, “Hi,” would she stop flat and stare me down? Until I added, “Chief Meteorologist Alissa Carlson.” Would she only then smile and ask, “Do I know you?” But she is savvy — Chief Meteorologist Alissa Carlson is — and caring. When she said this rain would bring us out of our drought, relief painted her face. That’s a funny way to put it. Relief painted. I hope the plug holds through the night. There’s no reason it should. It was dumb, shoving finger-load after finger-load of putty up through the hole. Dumb, but what else could I do? If it were a smaller hole, Roseana would have had me cram glue-covered toothpicks in it. That works for snugging up screw holes, but not this. I’d have to use something the size of pencils in this one. Dumb. Smart would have been to find the point of entry and cover it with canvas. I thought it’d be easier to discover it on the roof. I tried that yesterday, before the rain started. You could smell the rain in the air from up there. Hands and knees, I pressed the tiles down in that approximated area. Would the culprit tile be soft, spongy there? I could fall through by the time I knew for sure. It could happen. I’d be lying, dying, through tonight’s rain, and tomorrow’s and the next night’s rainstorms. My spine snapped. Paralyzed. Gawking up from the hallway floor at the four-foot hole where the little one had been? Dabs of putty on my forehead. How long before the kids would find me? Could happen, plummeting down through the roof like that. It did happen once in the house we rented before we bought this one. That was during the rain, too. There was a creak before the swamp-cooler smashed through the roof. The toilet and tub demolished. What if one of us had been on the toilet when it came crashing through like a meteor? Or is it a meteorite? Why don’t they happen more often? I’ve heard there are thousands a day actually make it through our atmosphere and collide with the earth. Was it a thousand — that number? You see and hear so many things on the run these days. Headlines. TV News. Talk shows. Doctor’s office magazines. Who has the time to check them out? Whether there are thousands making it through our atmosphere. A day. Thousands. A building or a car would be bound to get hit. Someone, somewhere. Damn, that’s getting loud. Hope the plug holds. A cork! That’s what I should have used. They come in lots of sizes. They should anyway. Snug one of those mothers up there, then putty over it. But no, you had to keep cramming putty up the hole with your finger. Idiot! Like that Dutch boy. First read about it when I was a kid. Was that a fable? He plugged the hole in the dike with his finger. No, that was a thumb. And it was a pie. Stuck in his thumb. Pulled out a plum. Nursery rhymes are stupid. This Dutch boy saved his village. Is that politically correct? Dutch? Going Dutch on a date? Means Dutch are cheap? Double-Dutch. That doesn’t. Skipping rope. What would the Dutch boy moral be? Has to be a moral. Otherwise, it’s only a story. The boy spends the rest of his life plugging the hole, saving the village. What’d they do, bring him sandwiches? Or spoon-feed him gruel. That’s the least they … Shit! A little sleep! Wish I’d kept those foam ear plugs. I must’ve had a hundred at first. Purple. They did the trick. No rain sounds with those. Started finding one here. One there. In the sheets. Like a spider or bug. On the floor, under the Kleenex box on the bed stand. Which were already used? Which weren’t? Tossed them all. Everything’s expendable. Cheap. People don’t give a shit. Things have no value. Unless it gives you pleasure this very moment. I’m not like that. Am I? Others are. A person’s life. Cheap. Expendable. Valueless. Snuff it out. Can’t go to a movie, a mall, a concert. You plan your whole life out. Your future. It means everything to you. Means nothing to the guy with the gun. And then you find yourself … What? Where? Wherever you go afterwards. Swimming around your thoughts. Maybe. You’re not here. Point is, no one cares for you but you. “So sorry for the ghost I made you be. Only one of us was real. And that was me.” Leonard Cohen. Damn! I’ll be humming that for what’s left of the dark. Always darkest before dawn. 5:02 … Five-oh-two. That used to be code for DUI. That Cohen had a weird slant. Dead. Can’t say he died too soon. He was in his mid-eighties. But he understood expendable. Did he? Or was it fakery? Wonder if he felt like a fraud. Even when he poked fun at himself, was he saying, “I’ll make myself small and people’ll say, ‘Leonard’s like I am,’ and they’ll love me?” “I’d love to speak with Leonard; He’s a sportsman and a shepherd; He’s a lazy bastard, living in a suit.” * * * Some wee early morning rambles from the overnight. Nothing unique. Nothing profound. We all have such episodes. One-Third Vs. Two-Thirds Worthy of no more than a footnote in that one-third of our lives we don’t spend on our feet. Skittering about trying to tilt the earth a little in our direction. Sloshing some more sweetness over into our “me-pot.” Except when pesky science steps in. Tells us that without enough of that one-third, the other two-thirds can be a bad joke. A joke whose punchline some of us won’t remember anyway. Because of what it does to our minds. Lack of sleep is serious business! Can you believe that 97 percent of all Google inquiries are about sleep deprivation? Good. I mean, it’s good that you can’t believe that. Because it’s a lie! My bad. But you were alert enough to glance at the ridiculous percentage and shout “Bull shit!” to your screen. That might mean among a lot of other things that you’re getting enough sleep. We do need to take that one-third of our life more seriously. Some Dubious Solutions For that reason I’ve sketched out several posts about sleep deprivation. I’ll try to be true to the scientific experiments and abstracts I’ll have assembled. But I do have a theory or two I’ll be wanting to spring on you as well. One of my posts will concern my running feud with Fitbit’s sleep statistics. Our relationship has been rocky from the get-go. I love my Fitbit, but she’s not always been faithful. And some indiscretions you can’t overlook. Sleep well …. Jay
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