Wake Up!

My friend made his early morning call to me on Monday and told me about a store he went to on Sunday afternoon.  It's a place called Ax Man Surplus.  He said it had a strange assortment of things for sale and so I'm picturing something like "Big Lots" because he said they were selling things that he described as close out  items. He talks of how there were tiny motors, pulleys, steel ball bearings, boxes and containers of every kind, spy cameras and microphones, and a torpedo dressed as a shark hanging from the ceiling. The buddy he was shopping with was picking up a hodge podge of gear that his students could use on their Rube Goldberg projects at the high school.

I'm giggling sleepily at his descriptions of colorful springs and itty bitty bottles and boxes of cup hooks; of rolls of wire and synthetic pillow stuffing and sugar dispensers; and of light switches, saw blades and bags labelled "build your own baby". I sit up in bed.  "Um...What? Did you just say build your own baby?" I think he's just making stuff up to see if I'm still awake (he does that sometimes, but usually he'll start talking about linoleum or the patina on the hinges of his bathroom door until I start laughing).  But he continues, "Yea. It was really weird!"  Ok, I still don't get it, so I just have to ask "What was in the bag?"  "Arms and legs and a body and a head and little shoes. It was so weird, Nancy. One of the bags had a motor of some sort in it too" he says.

I'm not sure whether to laugh or give into the shivers that are running up my spine. I pull the covers up around me and sit in the dark on my bed listening to the coyotes howling, my cat crying and the rooster crowing outside my open window.  He says, "Well, I better go start my day Sweetie.  I'll call you again later. Go back to sleep for a little while longer." Amazingly, I do -- and I dream of trying on bizarre ski clothes with Anna; I dream of cleaning out a rabbit cage; and I dream of potatoes levitating in a yoga studio.

At this point, I'm not entirely certain that this crazy story wasn't just one long, very strange dream...