Is That Your Car’s Stereo System Coming Down the Street or Are We Being Invaded?

I awoke the other night, fuzzy visions in my head of a large two-legged reptile, possibly of Japanese extraction, stomping down the middle of Jefferson and heading in my direction.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Awfully rhythmic for a reptile, thought I.

It was as I gained reluctant consciousness that I realized this was not imminent doom but the stereo system of someone who, loudly and proudly, was keen to demonstrate how little he thought of conventional sleep patterns.

I laugh at your sleepy-time mattress-ness!

These jacked-up nincompoops don’t come around often enough to cause me to update my dreams to include moving out of the city – after all, there are similar problems in the country – but it does cause me to think vengeful thoughts.

I lie in bed fantasizing about how I will single-handedly stop these scoffers of social contracts and the methods that I will employ.

I envision large buckets of cold water flung towards their cars from the slingshot I shall have installed on the roof of my house. Mild, yes; but I like to start slow. If we leap directly to the fantasy where I leap out flinging ninja stars, we’ve painted ourselves into a retribution corner.

Alternatively, I see myself jumping into my car, lights off, trailing them to their own homes. Once there, I give them some time to fall asleep, whereupon I scale the side of their building (ropes? suction cups? I haven’t worked this out yet), and then slip their hands into bowls of warm water.

Wake me up, will you? There you go: you peed yourself. I hope you’ve learned your lesson.

There’s also the one where I just give in completely and set up a lawn chair in the middle of the street and hold up score cards, rating the soon-to-be-deaf based on choice of artist, stereo system, and whether or not it rattles the vehicle’s undercarriage.

For now, however, I judge it best to just go back to sleep.

I’m saving my devious mind for bigger things.