Couldn’t wake up & even dozed off sitting on the potty
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“What’s going on here?”
Click on link above to watch short video from 2:03:23 in the morning.
Faithlyn, my wife, probably has a different memory altogether of what happened. The following, however, is what my sleepdrunk mind recalled the morning after.
Deep sleep is, for me, a rare and precious experience for it’s so difficult for me to fall asleep and stay asleep. Had gone to bed about a half hour after midnight. I was sleeping hard when the fire alarms went off. Earlier took one capsule of deep sleep herbs plus one capsule of ibuprofen for a headache with a tall glass of water.
See, I am not only a neurodivergent insomniac but also HOH, Hard of Hearing. My hearing loss is labeled moderate to profound, bilateral, originated from birth trauma some 65 years ago, and has become more severe over time. Many Hearing people are surprised to learn I don’t sleep with my hearing aids in. Oh, I’ve tried, and all the loud sounds of the night from baying dogs to vroom-vrooming cruisers would keep me up. Plus after wearing them all day long I need to get those devices out of my ears and off my head.
Faithlyn and I live in a new apartment complex in Shoreline just north of the Seattle city line. The complex is shaped like an enormous triangular battleship. Clearly I’ve seen too many science fiction movies. This is the first time the fire alarm had gone off in the middle of the frickin’ night. The fire alarms are so loud it even wakes me up, which I suppose is now good to know as we weren’t sure if the alarms would do so. My wife is even deafer than me, but she was up transfixed by some convoluted crime show on “NettlesFlicked.”
Groggy, I rolled over to sit on the edge of the bed. Confused by the loud sound. Must be time to go to work, I thought, but didn’t feel my pillow thumper go off. I reach out to turn around my clock to see the time: gosh, don’t remember what I saw except twas close to 2:00 in the morning. Damn. Not time to wake up for work. Felt even more confused. What is making all that racket? Just wanna fall back asleep. I was finally, finally sleeping hard!
My wife steps into the room and turns on the light. She gestures at me. Dazed by the lights, I look over at her thru squinted eyes, and feel even more confused. Can’t hear anything. She shouts at me something about a fire, a fire alarm, the fire alarms are going off, and we need to go. I think she said all those things for her moving lips appeared blurry without me wearing my eyeglasses. We need to get out of here. Now! What? First I need to go pee. That big, tall glass of water is coming thru!
So I slowly walk naked down the hallway to the master bathroom, sit down on the toilet, relax, and gosh my bladder feels so full! It must be as big as a flippin’ soccer ball! I fall back asleep on the toilet as I sit there peeing away. Well, half asleep. Dozing, apparently, sort of. With my head hanging chin down upon my chest.
Bright life turns on. No! My wife is astounded. I wake up and am still peeing. I have a lot to pee out! I’m a well hydrated man! Not a person who is well hydrated, geez. And I feel utterly confused and, yes, a little bit pissed.
Faithlyn? Oh, she’s pissed, too. More at me. She gestures with her hands. Apparently I’m not completely naked as somehow I had put on my eyeglasses on my way to the bathroom to go pee in the dark. I read her facial expressions, watch her lips move, put my own spin on her thangs.
“What are you doing!!!??? C’mon! We need to go! There might be a real fire this time! C’mon! Go put on some clothes! And let’s go!”
I shout back my bladder’s still full! And I’m gonna finish peeing!
Neither of us feel any joy in that moment. In hindsight it seems hilarious and ludicrous.
Slowly threw on some clothes. Caught myself putting my pants on backwards. Pulled on a hoody. Put on some sandals. Faithlyn is impatient and frustrated and can’t believe I’m so nonchalant and still so groggy. Just can’t wake up. After all, I’m known to be a little bit hyper alert and super paranoid when it comes to fires in general as my house burned down in 2010 from faulty wiring. Then the next house broke the following year when the neighbor’s house exploded behind us from a natural gas leak. Flames went up over the roofs and treetops after the blast wave blasted thru the neighborhood. In this moment, however, I just wanted to get back in bed and to hell with the damn fire.
We join a long line of fellow apartment dwellers in a mixmash of clothes to trundle down the stairwell and out the doors into the streets. People carrying not just babies but infants. Folks with dogs, cats, held in arms or place in pet carriers. Kids. Old folks. A babble of different languages and accents and ethnic groups sharing one common purpose: to get to safety and help each other out along the way and hope it’s only a false alarm.
Suddenly I wake up, got clear where I was, and my atrophied leadership skills kicked in. I stood up straight, which didn’t matter as I was still short. Who is this old fool stumbling around who suddenly perks up like God put a stick up his ass?
Big red firetrucks roll in with dying sirens and flashing lights. Firefighters quickly turn off the alarm. Together we all go back inside. I wave grumpily at the TV, and tell my wife to come to bed. I peel off my clothes and go back to bed, but she wants to finish out the interrupted episode of her show. I start giggling. Then howling. My wife looks at me like I’m an idiot and makes those strange floating moves with her hands she often makes to, I don’t know what she’s doing with her hands, but it reminds me of those sorcerers on TV or in the movies waving their hands in slo-mo to weave magick or a Star Wars character working the Force.
Stagger naked back to bed. Takes me awhile to fall asleep. My mind races across time and space. Finally doze off just as Faithlyn gets under the covers next to me.
Still waiting to learn if it was yet another false alarm or a small kitchen fire or someone careless with candles and cigarettes or what. The good news is despite being profoundly hard of hearing and in a state of deep sleep, I was able to hear the fire alarms squawking full blast. The light blinker devices in the ceiling did not work. If Faithlyn had not already been up and awake, I don’t know if I would have gone back to bed oblivious to all or somehow roused myself into action.
William Dudley Bass
Sunday 9 June 2024
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington
USA
Epilogue of sorts; added on Wednesday 26 June 2024:
A few days later I ended up in the lobby elevator with J, the head of maintenance for the apartment complex. I asked him if he knew what happened in the middle of the night that morning and if it was a false alarm.
“No,” he said, “it wasn’t. It was real!”
Apparently a mentally disturbed man, probably homeless, had slipped inside the complex. Maybe someone moving in or out had left a door propped open and forgot. Or he mingled with others to follow them into the building and they were too unawares or too apathetic or scared to do anything intelligent or compassionate. Couldn’t make out all of J’s words, but sounds as if this man wandered around until he found an apartment either with the door unlocked or propped open to air out. Got the impression it was a vacated, unoccupied unit being repaired and repainted for the next tenants. The guy gathered up extension cords and rubber hoses and stuff from around the unit and from the tools there and piled them into the oven. He then turned the oven on high. They burst into flames, burned, and unleashed off thick, acrid smoke. Of course, the alarms went off as loud as war. The firefighters found the intruder bracing himself in the doorway standing in clouds of roiling smoke like some kind of mad god.
“Man, people do the stupidest dumb shit sometimes,” I replied as J and I both slowly shook our heads. Then the elevator eased to a stop, the doors opened, and we parted ways.
The United States of America is gripped with a mental health crisis with multiple neuropsychological illnesses and injuries in play. This crisis is an epidemic, altho these are many different diseases and conditions and includes the simultaneous opioid epidemic. This is part of a complex, global mental and emotional health pandemic. Income inequality, the lack of affordable health care and of health care practitioners and social workers, the affordable housing crisis, the homelessness crisis, gun violence, and refugees fleeing endless war and poverty have all merged into a perfect storm of chaos. Our nation has already marched itself to the brink as different quarreling factions remain unable and unwilling to get along. Our political turmoil and religio-socio-cultural divides deepen rather than bridge divisions. Perceptions of economic and financial fragility feed into more fear of loss even in the midst of abundance. Nothing is done except make more news to doomscroll thru to further fuel our mass insanity. We all stand in our own doorways on the same planet as fires spread the madness and smoke.
Copyright © 2024 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.