Siesta Interruptus

Make it stop!

Please, someone, make that hideous noise stop!

I wake, startled to learn that I am the originator.

Snoring? Well, sort of. More like the plaintive cry of some dread beast in mortal agony.

I don’t get it. I just don’t get it! How is it possible for such a racket to be produced by the human vocal mechanism? And you want to know what the real kicker is? I was on the beach!

Yeah! Out there on the sand.

With the tanned and beautiful.

The young and nubile.

Snoring away in blissful oblivion!

So, I turn my head to the left, checking on a young family of six, sunning not three feet away. But I did it kind of stealth-like. You know what I’m talking about. Where you kind of let your head roll to one side like you have no control over your neck, hoping that should anyone be observing they’d think you were still asleep?

Like that.

Then I opened one eye just a crack to see if anyone was watching. Sound asleep—the whole lot of them.

So far, so good.

I do the same maneuver to the right adding, for the sake of variety, the one-arm-stretch-over-the-head move. I’m actually quite good at it, even if I do say so myself. To my right were two men and a woman of indeterminate age. To my surprise and utter delight the woman had her head tilted back and was emitting what can only be described as full on “snarks!”

If I have to explain that to you, maybe you should stop reading and visit another blog.

My relief was palpable.

It wasn’t me.

It was her!

I could have shouted for joy.

I could have...

“Hey, mister,” came a childish voice from behind me.

I sat up and turned around to identify the source.

A little kid stood there with beach pail and shovel in his hand.

“Yes?” said I.

The young interloper giggled and said, “Did you know you kind of sound like a goat when you snore?” before running off toward the water’s edge laughing hysterically.

And what could I say?

Plunged instantaneously from the heights of relief to the depths of crushing reality, there was nothing left for me to do but make an escape, and that as quickly as decorum would allow.

Just as I was slipping my feet into my battered but comfortable sandals, the snoring woman sat up, shook her mane of brown hair and fixed me with what I took for a baleful gaze.

“Hey!” said she.

“Hey yourself.”

”Did you know you—“

“Sound like a goat when I snore?” I interrupted. “Yes. I’ve already been told, thank-you very much.”

She laughed. “That’s not what I was going to say, but thanks for the warning.”

“You weren’t?”

“No. I was going to ask if you knew that you look a little like Bruce Willis.”

For a moment I was speechless.

“Uh, well, yeah, I’ve been told that a couple of times; I think it's the shaved head thing,” I finally managed.

With that she flopped over onto her stomach turning her head away from me.

I caught sight of the rude young man playing down by the water and watching me carefully.

I wondered how Bruce would handle this.

I stuck my tongue out at him and walked away, my ego temporarily salvaged.