Now most people consider me sensible. I stay calm in difficult situations and am a voice of reason. Well, I do have a tendency towards goofy behavior…occasionally. But usually I’m fairly sane. So one night when I started sending nonsensical texts to my friend Lea (name changed to protect her identity, and I’m sure she doesn’t want to publicly admit knowing me), she assumed I was just being weird again. But somewhere in my consonant fueled text, the letters “help” were able to arrange themselves.

Being the good friend that she is, she called me as soon as she finished aerating the bathroom. I proceeded to whisper that I was being held captive in a warehouse. To add to my dilemma, midgets were walking across the end of my bed refusing to let me escape. She took pause. Much to her credit, she only panicked slightly. Well, slightly is all relative. After determining that I was not indeed being held captive by little people, nor in a vacant warehouse, but clearly in trouble, she calmed down. Calm is also relative. After brilliant detective work on her part, necessitated by my continued incongruous rantings as well as my inability to perform basic body functions, she determined I had taken a full sized sleeping pill. It would also appear that it was too high of a dose for me. In hindsight, I should have shared it with the midgets. Or even the policeman who eventually showed up. If you have heard stories of people doing bizarre things on Ambien, well, I’m here to tell you, they are probably true.

Being the true friend she is, she couldn’t let me continue down my self-inflicted hallucinogenic trip unsupervised…but she lived four states away. Since I was new to town and lived alone, the only reasonable option was to embarrass me by calling the local police department. With some help from her husband, they called 911 from his phone, got transferred across four states and two time zones, and some 2000 miles to my little local police department.

This police officer was in for a treat. I proceeded to place my dogs outside while stark naked (sorry any neighbors that had to witness that), but in doing so threw my mop, broom and other kitchen cleaning tools on the floor. These apparently posed some threat to me and were duly punished. And since I lacked living room furniture at the time, after all I was new to town, I simply placed a chair smack in the middle of the room. Because, well, it seemed logical to me. Lea has managed to get me into a polka dot shirt and sweat pants after falling on the floor numerous times laughing. I have a habit of that. So I sat on the chair until the police arrived. He proceeded to take my phone away and reassured Lea I was fine and then tucked me in for the night.

Or so he claims. Because I actually have no memory of this. Not really. I woke up all “Miss Happy Sunshine” the next morning, wondering why on earth my broom and mop were in the middle of my kitchen floor. I began my own investigative work only to discover a series of text that looked a bit like this…

Me:”Bduixvebkdygsbjxjd”
Lea: “Haha”
Me: “):&/$?d)7#¥s&8((^%{?€su”
Lea: “??”
Me: “jshhsuingf*help msnsbgsgsf”
Lea: “Are you okay? I’m pooping right now. Call you when I’m done”
Me: “Xztsgsvsfgh”

Really, not sure what would have happened if Lea hadn’t intervened. But if you ever get a weird text from me late at night, just ignore it. I’ve made friends with the little people.