Thursday, January 16, 2014

A Late Night Phone Call

Last night I had entered into full zombie mode. This is because for the past week I've basically only slept for about 12 minutes, total. I feel like a workaholic right now, which is not at all glamorous, by the way. Fortunately what I've been experiencing with my job appears to be a relatively rare perfect storm of events and NOT the norm. 

By the time yesterday evening approached, I decided that in order to be able to function and not scream at children in public places for innocuous but OBNOXIOUS behavior, I should definitely get one good night of sleep. So I wandered home and climbed into bed at about 9:30.

I had dozed off when I was violently awaken awoken awaked woken up twice up the barrel once down the sided by the sounds of my phone buzzing. It's disorienting to . . . get called out of sleep like that and when you're as tired as I was last night when I received this phone call, everything seems like a colossally big deal. 

My Best Memory of the Phone Conversation I Had Last Night When I was Basically a Zombie

Eli: HELLO!?!? WHAT HAPPENED?!? WHO'S THERE?! WHAT HAPPENED?!

Daniel: Uh . . . Eli? It's me. Daniel.

Eli: OH MY GOSH! IS EVERYTHING OK?!

Daniel: Yes. I think so. Should something not be ok?

Eli: WHO GOT THE RABBITS OUT?! IS PAUL SIMON WITH YOU?!

Daniel: Eli? Did you develop Alzheimer's in the last four months?

Eli: AL? WHO? WHAT?!

Daniel: Actually there were signs of Alzheimer's prior to four months ago. It just seems to have advanced really drastically.

Eli: DID YOU REMEMBER TO TURN OFF THE STOVE AND THE WATER AND OH MY GOSH WHAT ABOUT THE STOVE?!

Daniel: Are you crying right now?

Eli: I'M VERY UPSET!

Daniel: Oh. Wait a minute. Did I wake you up? Is that what's happening here?

Eli: I think so.

Daniel: Eli. It's 9:45. I'm sorry I woke you up but I just want it on record that I did not call at an unreasonable time.

Eli: So you did turn off the stove?

Daniel: There's no stove.

Eli: THERE'S NO STOVE?! WHAT HAPPENED TO THE STOVE?!

Daniel: Ok. I'm sorry I woke you up. You should go back to sleep now. Assuming you haven't been asleep for this whole confusing conversation.

Eli: NO! You woke me up. What do you want?

Daniel: Nothing. I was just calling to say hi. But you seem to be turning from confused old man to irritable old man so I'm definitely going to insist that you just go back to sleep.

Eli: Ok. Fine. Tell Paul hello.

Daniel: Paul?

Eli: Paul Simon. DUH.

Daniel: Paul's not . . . ok. I'll tell him hello.

Eli: Maybe it's just because I'm tired. But this feels like the most confusing conversation we've ever had.

Daniel: Not even in the top ten, buddy. 

~It Just Gets Stranger

15 comments:

  1. Snorting and crying I'm laughing so hard.
    In our family we call that 'assassinating someones penguin'.
    Waking someone out of a dead sleep and when they answer the phone saying "I'm sorry, did I assassinate your penguin?"

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  2. I talked to Paul, and not to worry because he turned off the stove and put the rabbits out.

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  3. This is so much better than calling my sleeping brother, who sounds completely reasonable and lucid but will later have no recollection of any conversations had.

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  4. Hahahahaha! Oh how I miss Daniel stories.

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  5. Poor Daniel! He just calls to say hi to his long lost friend and Eli goes bonkers... Sleep talkers are pretty fun to have around

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  6. I was just thinking about Daniel too! I was having a text conversation with a friend about how much we are learning, teaching our kids. I need to resend her a link to the blog post where Daniel was telling you that he is definitely learning more than his students. Comic gold my friend. Oh, exhaustion looks good on you.

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  7. I once had a 5 minute conversation with a boyfriend while I was asleep. Apparently he had no idea until I bolted up and said, "when did you get here?" He said that I didn't say anything weird, but who knows, I mean how can I take the word of a guy having a conversation with a sleeping person without realizing it?

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  8. If someone wakes me in the morning to ask me a question, I'm somehow very lucid and capable of understanding what the what is going on, and able to communicate quite well. If someone wakes me up from a NAP to ask me a question or tell me something, they might as well be speaking Greek; I'm utterly confused, and kind of emotional. You were twice up the barrel once down the sided from a nap.

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  9. My dad and I used to have arguments in our sleep...from down the hall...through TWO closed doors. My dad also woke the whole house up one night screaming that there were smurfs all over him. That was about 20 years ago, and we still haven't let him live it down. When he starts tormenting us, we break out singing, "La la la la la la la la la la la." Shuts him right up.

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  10. I had a whole conversation just like this, at the crack of 7:45 this morning, with one of my kids' teachers. Only it was after I had driven 15 minutes to get there, and it ended with me saying, "Wait. Today's Thursday?"

    She mercifully ended my confusion by saying..."OKaaay... we'll talk later."

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  11. I was in a meeting today with many teachers from different departments and the discussion was very confusing (usually we stick to our own departments in college but I had an english prof, a historian and a fine arts prof in my group along with others I'm not so sure about). Anyhow, I was trying to make a point about something but not able to articulate it in a way they could understand so I said "Well, that's sometimes how it is twice up the barrel, once down the slide" Yup, I said SLIDE instead of SIDE. There was a small moment of silence and then someone said, "You are so right, it's always twice as much work and only half as much fun as we think it will be". Oh. my.

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  12. awaken awoken woken up? what's the proper present, past, present participle, past participle whichever tense of the word is right?

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  13. Your roommate Kurt will understand this because he's a nurse too. But, we have these BIG white boards in each patient's room in the ICU I work in. Because I'm a little OCD and like to have everything as PERFECT as possible. I always fill in as many blanks on the board as I can. Date, my name, patient's physicians name, date of admission, diagnosis, tests to be run, goals for the day, restrictions, yadda yadda. As part of a nurse's assessment (every 4 hours in the ICU) I have to ask the patient to state his name, date of birth, todays date and where he is to check his "orientation". This past Friday I put on all of my patient's boards that it was Wednesday, January 8, 2014. So much for keeping my patients oriented. #soembaressing

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