Flashback: The Writing Contest

All the signs were there.

I sat in dark despair

for I thought I saw a bear...

I awoke with a start. "What time is it?" I mumbled, trying not to wake up my wife but stirring Mischief, our Siamese cat, who slept at the foot of the bed. I sat up and squinted at the alarm clock. I had set it to wake me up an hour earlier than normal. As a backup, I set the alarm on my watch to wake me up a few minutes later.

Some sort of rhyme was swimming through my mind. A song, perhaps. Let’s see, I was just dreaming about...oh my gosh, the contest! It’s 3:30 a.m.! If I don’t hurry, I’ll never come up with a good story. I’ll have to compose some bad poem that only a mother would love. I lay back on the pillow and closed my eyes. What was the phrase? "All the wines are rare." No, it was something catchier than that. "Cut the vines. Don’t pare." No, that was the last one.

I turned to my wife.

"Darling," I whispered.

"Mm, mmm," she replied.

"I can’t come up with an idea for the new writing contest."

"What time is it?" she asked, her voice half-slurred.

"About 3:30."

"Don’t worry about it. You’ll think of something. Just let me sleep. I’ve got a MICOM presentation at 8:00 in the morning."

I moved back over to my side of the bed and stared at the red light of the smoke detector on the ceiling. "Call the lions to the lair." That wasn’t it, either. I rolled over to a comfortable position on the bed and knocked Lady, our aristocratic gray mouser, onto the floor. She padded off to her spot on the sofa in the living room.

I waited a few minutes, slipped out of bed, and crept through the house toward the study. I tripped over my wife’s cell phone charger in the kitchen. At the entrance to the living room, I kicked over my laptop computer. Panicked, I stuck my arms out and nearly toppled the right rear surround sound speaker, stand and all. I inched my way to the nearest wall to get my bearings. Okay, I’m only two feet from the programmable thermostat. Now just five steps to the hallway. Good. Turn left. Take a few more steps. Ahh! The doorway for the study.

I closed the door and turned on the light. Ooh, those bright halogen rays hurt. I looked at the clock above the computer. 4:00? Did it take me that long to get here? "I’m not going to make it," I told myself. "One more hour before I must face getting up for another day of software development."

I hurried over to the computer center, turned on the printer and then pressed a key to turn off the screen saver. I looked at the status window of the house sentry program. Hmm...someone has been sneaking through the house in the last fifteen minutes. I quickly glanced around the room. I hadn’t sensed anyone around me but I was half asleep. Should I wake up my wife? I looked at the status screen again. The first indicator light came on outside the bedroom. Then the next one came on in the kitchen a few minutes later. Had someone been following me? Oh yeah -- duh -- it’s me. I shook my head. If I was this dead, how did I expect to get anything written?

I stopped the house sentry program and started up Microsoft Word. While I waited for it to start, a blinking icon on the screen indicated I had an e-mail. I opened the mail message. A reminder from me! Great, I’ll be able to see the theme for the contest.

Date: 21 August 1997

Subject: Reminder

> Don’t forget to submit an entry for the writing contest.

Gadzooks! How am I going to write something if I don’t know what it’s about? I sat down in the leather desk chair, pressed the "Massage" button and closed my eyes. Just a couple of minutes to calm myself down and clear my head...