fbhjr

Last night I woke up just after midnight convinced the building was on fire. I looked at the light coming in the windows of the bed room and thought it was red and flickering.
“The light’s the wrong color,” I said. I got up and looked around. Everything was fine. As I came back to bed my wife asked what was the wrong color.
I explained, and we went back to sleep.
I woke up at about 4 in the morning to find the fingers of my left hand tapping against the wall. I tried to make them stop, but they wouldn’t.

I thought back to all the commercials for this current movie about exorcisms. I thought back to the show on them that had been on the Discovery channel that morning. I thought about how I had woken up a few hours before to “visions” of flames.
I thought back to the Salem witch trials where being able to say the lord’s prayer was considered proof you weren’t possessed by the devil.
So I tried it.
There was a hair in my mouth across my tongue and I couldn’t say it right.

It was 4 in the morning after an evening I spend doing spreadsheets for work. I had seen part of a special on exorcism and every commercial break on TV these days has an add for that movie. So, that stuff was on my mind.
And, under those conditions, it did make me wonder a bit.

But, I’m a person who is big on proof by experimentation.
I took the hair out of my mouth. I said the prayer without problem.
I put my arm back where it had been, with my bicep under my chin. I realized that with my arm bent as it was, pressure on my bicep made my fingers move without my being able to stop it. And, if I kept my arm there, with my head there, it was going to happen.
That morning when I my wife and I went out for lunch, we had found a fire truck sitting just outside of our building with its lights on. So, I had been thinking about our building and fire.

So, I’m pretty sure I’m not possessed. I was just having a bad night.
But, I can at least understand why some people would worry.