[Standard disclaimer]
It’s two am. I’m beyond exhausted but I can’t sleep. Having been lying in bed staring at the ceiling for three hours, I’m not at my best/most coherent/most charming/prettiest/whatever.
[/end standard disclaimer]
There are often, as the thread title suggests, moments in which I feel my life has become a sitcom. A sitcom with inaudible canned laughter track and invisible heckling audience, but a sitcom nonetheless.
Take what happened a few weeks ago, for instance. It was two am - strange how many important events take place at two am, isn’t it? - when I was woken up by the smoke alarm. It takes a very long time for me to wake up… very, very long time… so when I finally staggered out of bed, I was terrified I was about to be burnt alive, which seemed entirely too harsh a punishment for being a heavy sleeper. So I stumbled out onto the landing, and the alarm stopped. I was informed by my parents that it was just a false alarm, go back to bed, nothing to see here.
So I did. Go back to bed, that is. And I was falling asleep in seconds… and five minutes later it started again. To be clear, there are two smoke alarms in this house and one of them is just outside my bedroom door. And the noise is horrendous. Grating, wailing, hurts your ears with the volume, everything a smoke alarm should be, except there wasn’t any fire. So. I got out of bed again, and wailed myself, “What the hell’s wrong with it?”
My father is not a morning person either, and is just as irritable as me though he hides it better. “Does it look like I know what’s wrong with it?” he demanded. “Would I be standing on this chair if I knew what was wrong with it?”
“Take the batteries out!” I yelled.
“It’s mains-connected!” he yelled back.
“Are you sure there’s no fire?” I asked.
He gave me a Look. I went back to bed.
Five minutes later it stopped. I sighed, snuggled down and began to fall asleep.
Five minutes after that, it started again.
And then it stopped.
And then it started again.
And then it stopped.
And then it started again.
After two hours of that, it stopped. Finally. I fell asleep feeling like my nerves had become tiny little slivers of glass even now embedding themselves into my cerebral cortex.
I present this incident not as a solitary example - there are others.
Not so recently, this time. There’s a very good friend of mine - let’s call her Becca, as that is in fact her name, and the art teacher we were both unfortunate enough to be taught by, and let’s call her Evil Art Teacher From Hell, as that is, in fact, her name.
Becca had incurred the wrath of EATFH, I forget why, but it was a formidable wrath that I would not wish to incur upon myself. I was perched at a desk, watching the ranting and raving and throwing of HB pencils from EATFH, and the carefully cultivated lack of expression on Becca’s face while she submitted to it. Some minutes later, after the worst of the fury had subsided, EATFH turned her back.
[Now, I ought to make clear that Becca is taller than EATFH. Just so you know]
Becca, driven to it, lifted her arms and stabbed the air above the woman’s head in true Psycho style - imagine the music. Imagine it, as the invisible knife comes down above EATFH’s head. And she strikes - again, and again, and again…
The teacher’s back was turned. You’d think Becca’d get it out her system and it’d all be done with, right?
But no. Sadly, both of them were standing in front of a flat white wall, and the light in the room comes from the side, rather than the ceiling… you’re all intelligent people, you know where this is leading…
It was about that point, watching EATFH shout, “I can see what you’re doing, you stupid girl, your shadow’s cast on the wall!” that I decided my life has become a sitcom. There is an invisible audience throwing invisible popcorn at me from somewhere.
Over to you, my friends. Ever succumbed to my brand of paranoia?
Although, if you made it through this post, I can only conclude you have an unhealthy interest in me and my doings, and just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you, or throw things at you, whatever…
I need sleep.