Gummied!

By T.W. Burger

As often happens, my clever ploy to get to sleep faster and more soundly at night didn’t quite work out. Clever ploys do that when I come up with them. It’s a gift.

See, now that I am an old guy I don’t just drift off to sleep when my head hits the pillow. I typically turn in at about midnight and toss and fidget until two or three a.m. before I can drift off. That means that it’s pretty late before I get stirring again and I’ve missed the most productive part of the day.

I grew up in the 50s and 60s when the sleep aids of choice were either beer, booze or powerful chemical tranquilizers. No thank you. I also worked on an ambulance. It was not unusual for us to rush somebody to one of the two local hospitals to get their stomachs pumped after they popped some pills and then went out for cocktails.

Not a good look, by the way.

But a young friend came up with a dandy solution, I thought.

“You need to try gummies,” he said, cheerfully.

Of course! They are made from natural stuff, don’t slam into one’s brain like a battering ram, and are much more gentle han traditional remedies for anxiety.

Those are things I “knew” about gummies. Some of them may even be true sometimes.

I don’t have a medical marijuana card, but my buddy offered me a few in a paper bag, “just to see how they work for you.”

So, Sunday night I popped one in, chewed it up and prepared to be mellow.

Oops.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t mellow. Sunshine Superman kicked my butt.

I couldn’t lie still, and I certainly couldn’t sleep. I kept trying to get up and wander around the house, seeing what I could get into. I could not actually stand up, though, which is probably a blessing. Sue kept telling me to stay put, but I kept forgetting and heaving myself wobbily to my feet. At one point I announced that I was going to go get something to eat. I assume I meant out to the kitchen, not some all-night diner, though I’m not certain. Anyway, I apparently announced that I was desperate for animal crackers. Sue went padding off to the kitchen. Before long, I was sitting like Buddha on my half of the bed, crunching on a big bowl of animal crackers.

Eventually I dozed off, and snored like never before, thus wrecking Sue’s hope for any sleep for the remainder of the night. I awoke after lunch, wrapped around my covers instead of the other way ‘round, freezing, and afloat in a sea of cookie crumbs, with more on the floor.

The crumbs got cleaned up right away, and the covers put to rights, more or less. The animal crackers are stowed in the kitchen.

The rest of the gummies are back in their bag, where they belong.  

T. W. Burger was raised in town and graduated from Athens High School in 1967, then worked as a driver of everything from fork trucks to garbage trucks and concrete mixers, has been an apprentice mortician and ambulance attendant.

Terry is now a semi-retired journalist who resides on the banks of Marsh Creek, just outside of Gettysburg, Pa.