So, Brielle

My sister brings up a good point in her comment on the last entry, about the spider. I had totally forgotten about it, even though it was a monumental discovery at the time. Back when my bedroom was shaped like a cell at Guantanamo, I had the foot of my bed wedged up against the slant of the ceiling. I was in my early teens, I think, and taking a nap (although I don't think I took many naps then but. Whatever.) I woke because of a strange sensation, and as I opened my eyes, I noticed something clinging to the ceiling over my bed. It was a gifuckinggantic spider the size of small dinner plate (not a 16" pizza, you hyperbolator), black and brown striped, and moving at a pretty good clip toward exactly where my feet were. I tried to scream but nothing came out. The best I could manage was to roll off the side of the bed. I hit the rug and took off for the door and downstairs. I coughed out my story to my dad, who suggested we go back up to check it out, but I refused until I was properly equipped with the same bee-keeper helmet and face net that I would later use to protect me during my turtle job from clouds of mosquitos so thick you wouldn't believe me if I described them honestly. So, clad as I was in bee veil and sweatpants tucked into my socks, we burst back through my bedroom door. Me, I was fully expecting to tumble into a Shelob-sized web. Dad, I think, was a bit more incredulous. And what did we find on the other side of that door? We found Soccer, the cat. Licking her lips. I don't have to tell you what that means. It means she had just eaten something. Soccer had single-handedly dispatched this spider, head, legs and all, like a furry little superhero. She didn't leave a single hairy appendage, so naturally, nobody believed me. But Soccer and I know the truth of that one.
Another bed story- once I was lying in bed, when all of a sudden, I realized I was completely paralyzed. I couldn't move, I couldn't yell, I couldn't even breath. As far as I know, my heart wasn't beating. I tried to scream, over and over, for maybe 10 seconds, but no matter how hard I tried, exactly nothing happened. I didn't move even a millimeter, even though my brain was sending a jackhammer scream signal to my lungs and larynx. Once I realized that wasn't working, I started to freak out that I hadn't had a breath in a while. It was at that point that this sense of complete calm came over me. I don't know if it was from being a swimmer and being used to no air or what, but I just relaxed and tried to think. I figured out that if I could move anything, then I would be released and would be able to move everything. I picked what I thought would be the easiest thing to move- the end of my pinky finger- and concentrated on wiggling it, ever so slightly. I didn't force it, or scream the command, like I had been doing with the lungs. Just tried to move it a tiny little bit. I concentrated my will, but gently. All of a sudden, it twitched. The distal phalanx of my 5th digit twitched a tiny bit, but that was the key. It spread up my arm and on and across my entire body, releasing everything from paralysis. I gasped in a breath and then another and another and was so happy. And I really was awake the whole time.
Years later, my friend Dave brought up a story like this that had happened to him. He had told his dad about it, and apparently it is common in Chinese folklore (Dave is Chinese). The myth is that if you are trying to fall asleep, or have just woken up, and you have your arms folded across your chest, sometimes the Angel of Death will pay you a brief visit to remind you of your mortality. He comes and sits on your chest, pinning your arms down and making it so you can't move. Turns out, there is a whole bunch of medical literature on the phenomenon, which is known as hypnopompic paralysis, and has to do with the chemical paralysis that your brain initiates so it can pretend it's using the body during dreams without actually causing any movement. If you wake up just before or after dreaming, you can get stuck in the paralysis which is supposed to switch off when we are awake. Which explains most of my experience, except that I hope the brain doesn't chemically paralyze the diaphram while dreaming. So, this has to get added to the list of weirdest things.
How long are blogs going to persist? Are my great-grandkids going to google me and find this and discover what a potty-mouth I had? Google is definitely around for another 80 yrs, right?