Peanut Butter - of course

 

I poured a large glass of orange soda-pop and placed it on the nightstand next to the bed.  Usually I have water, but this time I felt like having orange pop.  You see, at various times during the night I wake up and if I'm thirsty, and I’m always thirsty, well my beverage is right at hand.

 

      This particular night, Claudia said, "That has caffeine in it."  But I was already snuggly and didn't feel like heading back out to the kitchen. 

 

"It will be fine." I replied and thought no more about it until 15 minutes later, and every 15 minutes for the next 8 hours.  I never slept a wink.  That stuff must be loaded with Super-Double, Time-Released Caffeine.  So along with the remaining sniffles from my cold, I now had a million and one thoughts about all the things I could be doing, instead of just laying there.   Things like shoveling the driveway, checking my e-mails, and building a catapult were all good possibilities, but I didn't want to wake Claudia, or Woody the biting cat, so I just laid there, alternating between blinking and quietly blowing my nose.

 

      At one point I rolled over to reach a Kleenex and found myself face to face with the digital clock.  I should interrupt here…  You know those things that when you look at them you can't tell what they say, until you focus on the spaces between the letters.  Then the message becomes clear?  The message is actually written with the spaces, instead of using actual letters.  Well, apparently that is how I was looking at the clock.  I wasn't focused on what time it was, all I noticed was the spaces between the illuminated numbers.

 

      There it was.  A crocodile head.  He had his jaws open and seemed ready to chomp at any moment.  I though it must be a crumpled Kleenex, sitting there in front of the clock, and my brain was just seeing it as a crocodile.  So I reached to move it and there was nothing there.  It was 1:42 and the space between the 1 and the 4 made a perfect crocodile head.  I was impressed.  What a find.  Not quite enough, however, to wake-up Claudia and report my amazing discovery.  But none the less, I was jazzed.

 

 

 

      It made me think of Tick-Tock, the crocodile that ate Captain Hook’s hand.  Of course I don’t recall what his name was before they started calling him Hook.  You know, before the crocodile incident.   It may have been Lenny, but like I say, I’m not sure.

 

      At 1:53 I noticed that the crocodile had changed to a very pregnant coyote, sitting, howling at the moon.  There was no moon, but the coyote was very visible.   Sometime after that I saw a Puffin, (One of those pudgy duck-like birds, with an orange bill and orange feet) though I forget exactly what time it was.  I believe the feet and bill were the two glowing dots between the first and second numbers.   While all of this was going on, my stuffy nose was getting the better of me.  I remember getting up in search of some Nyquil.  I took a good dose and headed back to bed.

 

      As best as I can figure, the smell of Nyquil on my breath must have chased off all of the critters, for I don't recall seeing anything else the rest of the night.

 

      It all came back to me though, around 5:15  when I opened the pantry to make my lunch for the day.  There, directly in front of me was Peter Pan.