“It’s nine a.m.” I said, trying to be Mr. Helpful Human Alarm Clock. I’m terrible at this.
“Wanna see what’s in back of my head?” she asked, very chipper.
“What’s that?” I asked, not sure if I heard her properly.
“What’s in back of my head.”
This baffled me. I looked carefully at what might in fact be in back of her head.
I didn’t immediately see anything out of the ordinary, but hey, maybe she’d survived some freaky head injury in the middle of the night, and was expecting me to gasp when I finally noticed the immense clump of dried blood and hair. Or perhaps she went to sleep wearing the scalp-tingler tool by mistake, which we all do occasionally. Or maybe “Wanna see what’s in back of my head?” meant, “talk to the hand,” as in, “don’t you see the pillow? I’m trying to sleep.” In any case, I was stumped.
“What’s in back of your head?” I sighed.
“The puppy!” she said, with great delight. Talking to a sleeping person is like talking to someone on drugs. They’ll say any damn thing and forget it immediately.
“There’s a puppy in back of your head. OK. I’m gonna go write this down.”
She smiled brightly and rolled over. When I read this conversation to her an hour later, she couldn’t stop laughing. She didn’t remember a word of it.
Neat !