Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Written Friday, April 4, 2008

WAKE UP CALL

A couple of restless nights.
Awakened twice by my cell phone’s ring tone playing the “Itsy Bitsy Spider”
I don’t have a cell phone.
But I got up to answer it.
Only once.
The second time I thought, “Let it ring. I’m not here.”

There are formal terms used by sleep researchers for this phenomenon.
I don’t know any of them, but I can tell you what’s going on with me.
Did you ever see a dog chasing its tail around in a circle and yapping?
That’s what I think my brain is doing when it makes up ring tones.
Just restless. Nothing important to do – nothing better to do.
Ring, ring, ring.

Or maybe it’s a sign of mild anxiety.
My grandson, age 12, and granddaughter, age 10, are coming for a week.
They’re both smarter than I am.
Faster than I am.
And a whole lot harder to fool than they used to be.
They’re at that age where no matter what you tell them – no matter how amazing – the first thing they say in response is, “I know.”
And they usually do.
I would throw that old backyard taunt at them, “Yeah, well prove it.”
But they probably can.

They’re big on dinosaurs. Junior paleontologists. Seriously informed.
I’ve been madly reading up on dinosaurs, thinking all the while that there’s nothing I’m reading they don’t already know. And I can’t even pronounce most of the terms and names well enough to make conversation.
But I bet they can.
So I’m anxious.
But not as much as I was.

On my way to town this morning I heard an interview on NPR with a medical scientist who said, “You have more bacteria cells in and on your body than you have human cells in and on your body.”

WOAH! I pulled off the road to think about this astonishing news.

That’s when I remembered seeing a book in the local bookstore full of pictures taken via super-power microscopes of the creatures that live on the creatures that live on our faces and noses and in our gut. The ones, that if they were dinosaur size and coming down the road would cause mass panic.
You’ve seen these pictures. They often appear in National Enquirer and other reputable scientific journals.

So I went to the store and bought the book.
And reproduced some of the photographs on my color copier.
So that when grandfather gives his “remember you’re in the Wild West” lecture on being careful around the ranch – “Watch out for spiders and scorpions and snakes – and especially things like . . . The Spiny-backed Boogersaurus, the Triple-clawed Cell Sucker, the Blue Widow Hairopterous . . . the Slimytoed Earwax Eater” . . . there might be a little more interest in the information I possess.
“Really?”
“Yes, I have photographs.”

Dream on, grandpa.
They’ll probably say, “I know.”
And they probably will.

That’s why I’m losing sleep.
Maybe the late night call was for me.
Ring, ring, ring.
“Yes?” –
“Wake up, dummy, you’re going to feel stupid for a week.”