...and some people are afraid of smiley, flower pillows. Or, more accurately, what a gift of a smiley, flower pillow on a day celebrating fathers and June birthdays from a this-close-to-senile grandmother means to an August-born lass. It's darn scary. She didn't want me to feel left out...being neither a father nor of those born in the sixth month....because I totally would have....I'm exceptionally bitter that I've not met either qualifier in all my 24-almost-25 years.

The point being, that people often develop an irrational nervousness toward otherwise benign, innocuous whatnots. I honestly just didn't like the way the pillow looked at me when I pulled it from the bag. Nick held it in his lap on the way back to his place, and I didn't like the way it smiled while he mechanically squeezed a petal while lost in thought at the traffic lights. It didn't blink. Its unerring smile broke my calm and I felt drops of uneasy sweat slide down between my shoulder blades.

I immediately disposed of the thing. Grandma would never know...she never does. She hasn't quite reconciled herself to the fact that I'm no longer nine years old...beyond being frustrated with my dual-toned eye, she's hoping that one of these days I still sprout up to do my viking ancestors proud...and hasn't quite forgiven my father for marrying into the short-n-stout, shitfaced, German blood line. Well, so be it. Those guys know how to live.

I tossed the pillow toward the trash with a spin and thought the matter closed...until I left the room briefly, and returned to find it situated with Nick's throw pillows on the couch. More than a little unsettled, I took several deep breaths before reviewing the scene. I renewed my efforts to eradicate its place in my life.

Thinking the matter closed, I cleansed all related thoughts from my mind. Besides, I've been a little "out there" as of late...my medications, where I am determined to keep my accusatory finger pointed, have been to blame for many a spacey moment. I had a somewhat upsetting dream the other night.

It was a Wednesday...and I was watching Nick and his family play volleyball...as I tend to do on Wednesdays. Then I got a phone call...on my cell phone...not many people have my number, or even access to my number. My whole family was dead, the caller told me: freak car accident...everybody was gone, both sides of my family. At first, my reaction was normal—you know, sad, disbelieving, tortured—but it passed a little too quickly and I demanded, "HOW DID YOU GET THIS NUMBER!?" Then, a second thought crashing through, I interrupted their answer to inquire, "Why the hell were all of my family in the same place? They don't even like each other!"

Then I woke up. This just in: my soul really is blackened.

So anyway, being that I'm up a few times a night, and several nights a week I still catch myself wanting to get dressed at 1:30 AM to go to Mom's bedside and see that she's alright, I figured I imagined the pillow too. You never know, and you can never be too protective of your failing mental capacity. That, and I'm blond...I get enough points deducted just because I have that "look" to me.



However, as I entered the bedroom this afternoon, I am pretty sure that I could be described as completely lucid and quite in control of my perceptions. He likes mind games, my Nicholas does. I just wish he wouldn't choose such pliable subjects to poke.