Noises in the Night

I dreamed about lottery numbers the other night, and woke up with 6 numbers on my mind. After scrambling through the magazines I had tossed beside my bed for an empty white space and then through my nightstand for a pen, I wrote down the numbers. I wrote them as best as I could since I have trouble opening my left eye for a good 10 minutes or so after I wake up every day. My sister says I look lopsided. I haven’t bought a lottery ticket yet. The numbers are barely legible, but I can make them out.

I had a boyfriend once who kept repeating the same three numbers in his sleep all night one night. 3, 4, 6. I told him about it when he woke up the next morning. That night, they were the Pick 3 numbers in the Virginia Lottery. He hadn’t bought a ticket. A few months before that, we were lying in bed and I asked him what he done that day for his day off. He told me he had built a sneaky box. I asked him what a sneaky box was. He explained that it was actually a door, and you put all the things you didn’t want anyone else to see behind it. I asked, “Then, why isn’t it called a sneaky door?” He didn’t answer because he’d fallen asleep. The next morning I asked him if he could show me the sneaky box he built. He cracked up and said he didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. I told him he’d told me he built a sneaky box the day before and I was curious about what it looked like. He still had no idea what I was talking about even after I explained everything that he’d told me. Obviously, he had just been talking in his sleep then too. And, if you think hearing a grown man say the words “sneaky box” over and over isn’t funny, then I don’t know what to say to you.

The trouble with opening my left eye when I wake up is that I can’t see anything well. I used to wake up in the middle of the night with great ideas for things to write about. Well, at least they seemed like great ideas in the middle of the night. I couldn’t see with my one good working eye to write down the ideas I had even though I kept a little notebook and a pen in my nightstand. I got one of those little recorders and I set it to be sound activated so I wouldn’t even have to fumble around to press any buttons. The morning after the first night I used it I woke up to find that some tape had been used. I didn’t remember having said anything overnight. I rewound it and pressed play, curious about what I would hear. All that was on the tape was me snoring. I could tell when the cassette stopped recording because I wasn’t snoring anymore and when it would begin recording when I would start snoring again. I knew that I was a snorer before then, but I had no idea I was a SNORER. I kept using the little recorder for a while, hoping I’d get some nugget of an idea one night, but every morning I would just rewind the tape because all that was on it was my snores.

I’ll let you know if I get rich from my lottery dream. Or maybe I won’t…