That's Just Disturbing

I cannot take naps. They do evil things to my brain.

"It's not forever," I explained to Paul. "It's not noise or mold. It's the sun. When it's summer, I can't sleep. In the winter, the angle of the planet lets me sleep, because it's darker and not lighter, and my brain likes that. Winter is to sleep the way summer is to awake-ness."

I didn't even know what the heck I was saying. When Paul nodded and backed slowly away...it made sense. I would have backed away too. But I was stuck. My brain was inside me, and that meant I was stuck with it and its crazy analogies.

Paul was just trying to be nice. Paul is always nice. That's why when I get angry with him, I feel like I'm Satan, except human and a girl. When someone is nice to you all the time, and you aren't always a nice person, you tend to feel like you're evil and horrible in comparison.

Paul, thinking that my problems with insomnia were caused by external things (noise, allergies, and the like), had offered to switch rooms with me so I could have his much-quieter bedroom. But noise is not why I can't sleep, unless you count Dad's morning I-Just-Got-Gutted-By-a-Fillet-Knife Yawn, which would wake anyone up no matter how well they slept. Evisceration is loud.

What I was trying to do was explain that I go through spells of sleeplessness, but they pass if I'm patient. Somehow, I don't think my meaning was coming across, with my semi-paganistic ramblings.

I had come home so tired, Mom told me to go to my room and sleep. This was because I fell asleep with my head on my purse while sitting at the kitchen table.

But, as I mentioned, naps don't go well for me.

When I woke up, my brain had become soup. Everything I said was, essentially, Word Salad. Did I feel any better? No. Of course not.

If anything, I felt worse. For one thing, no one could understand me. Not even me.

But, to make matters worse, I'd had a terrible nightmare, something so bad it was beyond imagining, and it was all Dad's fault because his dream self was so disturbed and clearly evil.

Let me try to describe it for you.

Michael Flatley.

Dogs of the Dance.

Dream Dad, spurred on by his love for Irish music and his adoration of our dog, Darcy, had decided to, as a Christmas present for the family, take us all to see Michael Flatley's new musical masterwork, Dogs of the Dance*.

Think Lord of the Dance, except instead of people, there were dogs, all of them in traditional Irish costume.

Even if Dream Me had been able to handle the absolute torture of sitting through dogs dancing to Irish music, it became apparent to me from my seat in the theater that the dogs were looking mistreated. Apparently, the humane society had not been present during rehearsals, because those poor dogs looked hungry and sad. I wanted to rescue them. But before I could, Mom was waking me up, so the dogs were abandoned in the horror of my nightmare.

Poor dogs.

It was a bad dream.

I spent the rest of the evening trying to stay awake for a few more hours in order to improve my mood so I wouldn't fall asleep and be plagued by more nightmares involving dogs dancing to Celtic music.

No more naps for me.

Sadly, I can't let this go, because I want to know where Michael Flatley came from. I get the Irish music. Dad plays the Irish whistle. I even understand dreaming about dogs. I love dogs. But why Michael Flatley? WHY?

The only thing I can think of is that Maureen Johnson's Riverdance story emerged from my brain after a year of percolating in my subconscious. But who can be sure?

I'm a little afraid to sleep again.

*Let me make this clear: The REAL Michael Flatley is, to my knowledge, not planning any Irish dancing with dogs at any point in the future. It will not be coming to Broadway or to anywhere, because having dogs dance like Michael Flatley is a horrible, horrible idea and probably impossible.