I passed a very large electric plant and the stories high scaffolding triggered a childhood memory.
When I was younger, early teenage years, I had difficulty getting to sleep at night. (No wonder I became a web designer.) I’d lie awake in bed and try as hard as I could to fall asleep. Of course, that never works.
Someone once told me that counting sheep helps you fall asleep because the repetition bores your mind to sleep. (The same principle applies to college classes.) It sounded believable to me, so I thought I’d give it a try. Sheep seemed like too docile a choice for me though, so I tried to come up with something else repetitive to stupor my active imagination.
I imagined myself on the run from some unnamed authority. I’d escape down a manhole cover, climb down a ladder then through a tunnel then down another ladder and through another tunnel, ad infinitum until I hopefully fell asleep.
What’s particularly odd is that what I envisioned was actually from one of the Space Quest games, I can’t recall which. Two, I think. The one where you crash land on an alien planet and try to avoid being captured by the Sariens or being eaten by the various Labion jungle creatures. Halfway through the game there was a part where you had to navigate a series of tunnels and ladders without running into the evil that exists in the darkness. (Oh the days of save, try, reload, retry, etc.)
It was that exact scene I’d picture, 16-color EGA graphics and all. Down, across, down, across, c’mon sleep, down, across, down…
Now I spend all day back and forth across railroad tracks, up and down elevators, staring at pixels trying not to fall asleep.
Freewrite #8
