Countdown

I effectively used the "count backwards from 100" technique to fall (back) asleep last night, or this morning, rather. Between 100 and 99 I tell myself that it's a silly idea, that it won't work. 99 to 98 I tell myself to just concentrate on breathing deep. 98 to 97, this still isn't going to work. 95 to 94, how are you ever going to fall asleep if you're still thinking, just stop thinking you fool!?

I remember 88-87. So, it works, as hard as I try to talk myself out of it.

My grandma slept 1) with a gun underneath her pillow and 2) with her jaw unhinged. I would find times when no one was looking and play with it (the gun, not her jaw). It was a small black thing that I was enamored with. She kept the bullets in the table beside her bed, the drawer spewed out a heavy mothball smell when I opened it. I never put the gun and the bullets together, I could figure out what bad things might happen. She didn't keep the thing under her pillow to make friends.

I wonder if she could tell that I had picked it up to inspect its tight curves and solid weight? I don't think I tried to pull the trigger even once, a foreshadowing of a fearsome nature that has followed me into adulthood.

I think about her gun and the thin skin on her fingers and if she would have shot a man standing at the foot of her bed, or me as I sneaked in for solace after a nightmare.

I too, sleep with my jaw unhinged. It's something I laughed at in my mind, seeing her laid back in her recliner, mouth open for any old thing to fly in. I thought it was just a thing older people did. And so, I'm cursed with the same unpleasant fashion of slumber, plus drool, because I believe I was unsympathetic.