Thursday, July 13, 2006

I Didn't Dream it

The in-laws are in town and I'm sleeping on a futon in the basement this week. My daughter woke me up at 2:30am to tell me that she was awake. Thanks! I was in that super-deep state of sleep, beyond REM sleep, and her cry at the top of the stairs woke me from the dead. It took me a long time to realize what was going on, what time it was, why she was upset, and where I was. It turned out that my wife was asleep and declined her request for a hug and a kiss. I offered a hug and she ran back to her room. Must have been my breath.

I couldn't get back to sleep so I turned on the television and PBS ran a special about sharks. A shark expert from South Africa put some attractor (chum?) in the water on a string and bent down on a platform at Ocean level. When a Great White shark came calling, he reached out and put his hand on the underside of the shark's nose. The shark had some kind of instinctive reaction where it opened its mouth and fell over backward into the water. The website described it as momentary paralysis. Here's a picture from the special. I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it, sleep-deprived as I was.

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