I pretty much just got home and did what I usually do, which is usually just put my feet up and lay back in front of the TV and wait for my eyes to start to cross and my dreams to overtake me.

I can’t just fall asleep in a chair like I used to though, not without biting my tongue, as it seems when I’m lying on my back and just as I’m about to fall asleep I’ll throw myself awake with a sudden alligator snap and a paddling of teeth.

It’s like some asshole just splashed cold water on my face in the street, and insincerely said “Wakey Wakey, Eggs and Bakey,” and it’s always a rude awakening, and why I now use a mouthguard to nap and sleep.

The dentist says to me do you grind your teeth, and I tell her I know that I clench a little, but not hard enough to shatter a shot glass, to which she says you don’t have to clench that hard in order to cause damage and the grinding may be almost imperceptible.

It doesn’t take much, she says, and I tell her I use the guard, and that pretty much ends the conversation. Just keep using the guard, she says. It’s probably just trauma, my reasonable brain likes to diagnose.

But the senile, old man inside me who doesn’t like to wear pants and who refuses to fix his underbite is pretty sure my own mouth has had it up to here with me and wants me to shut it and be broken.

Either that, or what used to be nappy time is now karmic payback time for all those smart sounding words and thoughts that I’ve used over the years trying to prove like a bad, bad boy that there’s always a rational way to make yourself right, and always while trying as hard as a granite tabletop to do that.