my arms fell asleep
By Mark Czerniec
August 31, 2006 7:56 AM

i woke up in the middle of the night, and i must have been lying funny, because both of my arms had fallen asleep. this sort of thing has happened before, and usually there's a painful 'pins and needles' phase while the limbs come back from limbo, but not this time. these babies were as numb as a couple of vacuum-packed whole beef tenderloins from costco. if someone helped, i could have slammed either one of them with the door of our volkswagen and listened with detached interest to the soft sound of the thud.

it was about 4;00 am, so i went back to sleep until the clock radio came on at 5;30, but the situation had not improved at all. after we got out of bed and while amy was getting dressed for work, i experimented with spinning around and swinging my stupid arms, windmill-style, into the dresser and the doorjamb and so on. it was wonderful, raucous fun, but amy told me to stop it, because she was trying to listen to the npr story about oatmeal for breakfast. this ticked me off a little, so i just sulked while she left.

but now as i sit here and type with my nose, i feel bad. i guess that what i've learned from all of this is that you should always hug someone when you have the opportunity, because you can never be sure you'll have that chance again.