Incident #872 Where Val Blames Hick

Darn that Hick! Even in his absence, I couldn't get a good night's sleep.

We'll get to that in a minute. But do you know what he did on Sunday morning, when he was half a state away, and I could have slept in to my heart's content? He called me at EIGHT freakin' THIRTY! A.M.! Sure. Some of you may think that's plenty late enough to call someone on a Sunday morning. But not Val Thevictorian! The night owl. The darkness dweller. The woman who has always been the last to bed, and rarely early to rise, unless a job depends on it. Even as a kid, I was awake late into the night. Listening to the snores and breathing of the rest of the family.

Okay. I was already up at 8:30 Sunday morning. But Hick didn't know that! And I'd only been up since 8:00. having gone to bed at 2:00. But Hick had to make sure he had me under his thumb and out of his bed. Which is where my current problem arose.

Because Hick was not there to stab me with his raptor talon toenail, knock my pillow stack askew by burrowing his arm under it, blast my face with breather air, stab me between the shoulders with his pointy elbow, labor my breathing with his gaseous emissions, and, most importantly, TAKE UP SPACE...I hurt my back sleeping. My back, you see, is accustomed to the hefty sag Hick puts into his side of the mattress. Without is, my back worked overtime while I slept, trying to balance itself in a manner to which it was unaccustomed.

Uh huh. It's that big muscle near my spine, above my right big buttock. Do you know how hard it is to do anything without using your back? PDH. That stands for Pretty Darn Hard. This is no joke, like that cartoon stick man on the back of T-shirts, the one holding the back stick of another stick man, saying, "I've got your back!" Nope. No joking matter. It's PDH to even walk around with a twinge in the back muscle above your right buttock.

So what happens today at school? A little snippet of a girl comes through my door, all cheerful and such, as I'm shambling like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, dragging my right buttock behind me walking to the hall to prop myself against the white-painted concrete block wall for class-passing duty.

"I got a new bag!"

"Oh...good for you!"

"It is SO heavy! Here! Try to lift it!"

"Um...no thanks. You're not going to trick ME into throwing out my back! I can see that it's heavy. You've got it stuffed full."

"So you're not going to lift it?"

"No. But it's a nice bag. Roomy."

Yeah. I hate to disappoint my captive audience for experimental stand-up, but sometimes, Mrs. Thevictorian simply has to draw the line. This is one day she was not going to be left holding the bag.