The Space Between the Window and My Bed

When I was a bit younger, I had a job at a daycare in Pittsburgh. At the time, Pittsburgh was, if you factor in the traffic, about an hour and a half away from me and I started work at 8:00AM on the dot, Monday thru Friday. If you didn't feel like doing the math, that means that I would have to leave my house by no later than 6:30AM and earlier than that if I wanted to remain in the owner's good graces. I got up every morning around 5:00AM so that I could have time to sit down with a bowl of oatmeal, collect my things and have a moment to think of what I wanted to accomplish that day with the children.

Prior to this job, I was a night owl. It had never been easy for me to get to sleep at any decent hour and coupled with the underlying fear that I will not be able to function without at least seven hours of sleep proved to be a problem. I scoured my brain for any hint of a solution to this conundrum and compiled a list. Each night I would refer to my list around 9:00PM and prepare the next potential sleep aid and each night I would lie awake, hoping that I was just one sleepless night away from finding my remedy.

When I was seventeen, some friends and I bought some pot off of a girl we knew, sat in a garage and smoked out of a bowl stolen from a brother. I remembered really liking pot, but I was so sick with guilt after for smoking it that I never even dreamt of that sort of foolishness again. I also remembered that it made me tired. So, as they say, desperate times call for desperate measures and I contacted that same girl, many years later, and was still able to get some pot from her. Nothing ever really changes, you know. She explained to me that it was "the real deal" and that I would "lose my mind". I told her that I hoped that didn't happen. I went home that evening around 5:00PM and putzed around the internet for a spell looking for DIY smoking apparatuses while eating a Hot Pocket. I settled on the toilet paper roll steamroller and got to work on building one.


To be continued. Soon.