The One in Which I Explain How a Pimped Out Frog Saves me from Murderers

I sleep with an eye mask. You know, like a grown-up version of a Pin the Tail on the Donkey blindfold but way less sexier. My two plain black ones (the ones they give you on airplanes) both broke, so now I'm using one of the kids' and it has this creepy pimped out frog on it. It kind of scares Big V when he rolls over and gets greeted by a wide-eyed gangster amphibian.

I didn't always wear one. In fact, if you know me at all you'd probably be shocked to learn that I purposely put something around my head that could easily symbolize the choking hands of a sociopath. Albeit a sociopath with bad aim, since, really, the point is to choke the life out of me while I sleep, not play a rousing game of Guess Who? Except now that I think of it that's exactly what a sociopath would do because sociopaths are notoriously slow and calculating (probably because they have bad aim) and creepy. And everyone knows there's nothing's creepier than laying there with a strangers hands over your eyes.

I used to sleep with the light on. The closet light, with both doors wide open. Because my room was at the back of the house... the rear... the side of the house where all the murderers hide lying in wait. And there was a tv antenna attached to the roof right outside my bedroom window. Like a giant ladder leading directly to my innocent teenaged body. It'd be super easy for someone to climb the ladder, abduct me, and carry me out the back yard, through the forest, down the cliff and into the raging river, thus causing the bloodhounds to lose my scent. I'm sure some smart ass I'm related to is going to point out that it was actually a mildly sloping hill, a few trees, and a small creek, but to that I say it's not your body about to be hacked into millions of pieces.

And so I slept with the light on because that way the killer would be all oh, look! Easy access to a second story window! Oh, wait. The light's on. Shit. Guess I'd better move on to another house. And it totally worked, too, because I'm still here.

So, now you're probably wondering why, if that life saving tactic was so successful, I'm now choosing to wear an eye mask that makes everything absolutely, one hundred percent pitch black.

Because I watched some stupid movie where the freaking crazy guy paints his body to blend into the brick wall and no one could see him because he blended into the freaking wall that's why! Do you understand what I'm saying to you? Someone could be in my house and I could walk right past them and not even know they were there because they would have masterfully painted their entire body to look like my surroundings, which is the main reason I keep moving the furniture around. To keep them on their toes.

So, knowing this - knowing that some deranged lunatic could be in my house and I could easily walk past them and not see them - I have decided to heighten some of my senses by limiting one of them. You hear all the time how someone goes blind and suddenly they have this amazing sense of smell or super human sense of hearing. Which, by the way, I'm totally banking on an increased sense of hearing because I don't really want to have to go licking my way around the house to find out if there's a Murderer in Waiting. Know what I mean? With my newly heightened senses (thanks to my proactive restriction of sight via the froggy eye mask) I'll be able to hear their subtle movements, soft feet against the floor, the sound of their slow methodic breathing  - which probably smells like hot dogs. And I'll be able to smell their sweat. And their breath (especially if it smells like hot dogs).

Now, I haven't actually thought all the way through the scenario to what I would do once I found them but I like to think I'd be vicious. Or at the very least just still able to scream loudly enough to wake Big V (who sleeps through everything; even that time we had a police squad running through our yard shining flood lights in our bedroom windows).

Oh, and since I know you were wondering, I had no idea what the movie was but I knew you'd want to know so I googled creep paints himself to look like bricks and sure enough, there it was: When a Stranger Calls Back. And don't get all salty because I didn't link a video. There is no way I'm looking that shit up. I'm busy digging out the number of my therapist; I'm not going to be able to sleep for weeks.