* * * * *
                                        
                                 Second chance
                                        
I woke up in horror and lo, my alarm clock read 11:47 pm.

I'm supposed to be at work by 11:30 pm.

I begin panicing, wondering why both my alarm clock and beeper failed to go
off. My alarm clock, okay. Over the past few weeks I've been missetting it
more and more often, to the am time in stead of the pm time. So that might
explain why the alarm clock didn't go off. But the beeper? That's set
correctly, since it saved me yesturday, and I hadn't reset it.

I check my beeper, which I was wearing to bed (I had been napping you see,
just prior to going to work) and I had been paged. Was I beeped? I though.
Did the page come in and interfere with the alarm? My pager is set to vibrate
upon a page, but the alarm sounds off with a shrill sound. The page itself
was a garbled text message but what there was of it lead me to believe that
someone was expecting to meet me outside in the parking lot.

I stumble my way through the house, and the front door (which is a nice set
of double doors) is unlocked. I don't think anything of this as I clumsily
make my way outdoors.

Of course no one is there.

I head back in, and as I'm closing the door this small lap rat of a dog comes
shooting into the house. I start yelling at it to leave and just before it's
about to disappear into my room it stops, turns around, and as I'm still
yelling at it, comes back and leaves out the door. I slam the door shut.

At that point, my alarm clock goes off.

What?

I found myself in bed, horribly confused. I look over at the alarm clock,
which reads 10:58 pm.

I need more sleep.


Email author at sean@conman.org