Remove Your Elbow From My Back, Val Said Pointedly

Alas, my friends, Val did not have a restful slumber last night.

The moment I plopped myself onto my side of the marital bed, I was stabbed in the back by my sweet baboo. That’s right. A left elbow intruded between my shoulder blades. That’s the proximal end of the ulna poking the space between the scapulae, plural for scapula, in science teacher talk. Of course I squirmed to get away, but it followed me, that pointy implement of torture.

I felt like a chunk of beef speared by a skewer. A maraschino cherry pierced by a plastic sword. A cocktail weenie stabbed by a festive red-cellophane-frill-tipped toothpick. Like a cube of day-old bread impaled by a fondue fork. Like a whale harpooned by a…well…a harpoon. That princess with a mere pea under her stack of a hundred mattresses had nothing to complain about.

When I dared voice a complaint, Hick denied that his bony protuberance was in contact with my thinly-padded spinal column. He then moved the offending appendage, rammed it under my pillow stack, and denied that it was there. “My arm is NOT under your pillows. Your pillows are on my arm.” Hick would argue with a guy when he stumbled and accidentally stuck his chocolate bar in the guy’s peanut butter. I can hear it now: “No! YOU got peanut butter on MY chocolate!” There is no arguing with Hick when he’s in denial. But that doesn’t mean I can’t try.

“Duh. I KNOW my pillows are on your arm. So why did you put your arm UNDER my pillows?”

Hick snorted and removed the intruding limb, choosing instead to breathe me into insomnia.

Here’s the worst part. The salt in my between-scapulae wound. Hick got up this morning and told me to wake him in an hour. He was going in to work late, because he was tired.