Schnarchen. (verb) To Snore.

When you grow up completely unaware that there is this is thing called "The Universe" which happens to be out to get you, you: 1) Become an overly anxious child who continues to be hyper anxious about trivial things in later life and 2) assume monsters are real.   As you can see, these two create quite the paranoid six year old. 

But why did I do this to myself?  Oh maybe because, like all children do, I used my super awesome imagination—which by the way, I developed because I am an only child who had  no one to play with until he was in third grade—to make sense of the world around me.  What kind of things did I conjure from the depths of my mind?

Let's see, there was the evil gorilla man who always tried to watch me while I napped, but the blinds on my great grandma's door stopped him from doing so all I could ever see of him was his shadow being cast on the blinds.  Yeah, he was pretty mean.  I was positive he was going to strangle me in my sleep like all gorilla men are wont to do.  

Turns out he was just a coat rack, some coats and a hat that hadn't moved since the 40's.  I didn't learn that til I was like 10.  

But then there were times where it wasn't so easy to close my eyes and make the bad things go away.  Oh, no.  Visuals you can get rid of but not sounds.  

Snoring haunted me like...a ghost haunts a house?  Whatever, go with it.  Point is, it was there and I couldn't see it and it was getting on my nerves.  Unfortunately at this hyper vigilant point in my life, I was oblivious to the direct product of nasal congestion and/or sleep apnea.  I equated allergies with not being able to eat Oreo cookies or drink Hershey's chocolate milk as they would break me out into this weird red rash thing.  I grew out of this, don't worry.

So there I am, trying to sleep at my grandparents' house (you see where this is going) and I hear this awful, vicious demon-bear-warthog with chainsaws for teeth standing outside my bedroom door.  This DemonBearHog has obviously just finished running 3 kajillion miles from the depths of hell to torment me as not only is it snarling, but it has to exhale deeply from all the running.  I mean, I couldn't even run down the street without getting tired so I could only imagine how tired this unsavory beast must have been. 

I tried to make it go away, but it just never did. No amount of eye closing or singing to myself ever made the beast stop.  So I just stayed there all curled up, eyes wide as I had resigned myself to my fate of being gnarled up by whatever this was.   And because I was a good kid who prayed at night and got straight A's, I did not bother my family with my childish beasts of which I knew they would not be able to see or hear.

I eventually learned that this thing called snoring existed and my grandpa did it.  However, I also began to learn that anything with the word "snore" as its root, was part of the universe's plan to take me out.

But I'll tell you the rest next time. 

Universe: 4.  Me: 1