A Snore-ibble Night

As my hillbilly relatives have pretty much no houses among them, my grandmother invited my mom, sister and I to stay in her one-bedroom, two-room apartment for the night. My sister and I slept head-to-head on blow-up mattresses that were crammed into the kitchen.



My grandmother, thinking she was sparing us, slept on the couch. It was all good until like eleven o' clock.



Suddenly, this horrible noise began emitting from my grandmother's mouth. This is a woman who has pretty much been fortified on chicken-fried vegetables and bad meat her whole life, so her farts are colossal and sound like they're forming words, so it shouldn't have come as surprise that she snored like the dickens. It sounded like she was simultaneously dying, choking, and snorting Campbell's Chunky soup through her nose.



It went on like this for a couple hours, till about 1:00. My sister and I tossed and turned uncomfortably, trying to get comfortable on mattresses which incidentally also
made farting noises every time you rolled over. My grandmother snored on, oblivious and happily asleep, with her nostrils and lips flapping and emitting train-whistles and ship foghorns.



We lay like this for what seemed like forever. Time was sucked into an unfathomable loop of oblivion. It was as if we were Odysseus in the time of the sirens and we had to find some way to avoid the horrible keening animal-death noises. I tried stuffing my own hair in my ear, and, when that predictably failed, curling up my head in the blanket like a burrito. My mom, blissfully asleep, was using a noisemaker, but to me the noisemaker sounded like someone peeing off a cliff.

And then, around 2 or 3, Father Time decided to screw with us more. The couple upstairs was apparently young (although really? young people in a quaint country suburb named Whispering Woods?), because all of a sudden sexytime was happening. It sounded like an Irish jig coming from the ceiling. Also bad rap music.



My sister, who doesn't like my music, turned to me and pleaded for my iPod to spare her from the horribleness.



I suddenly felt this grim knowledge burst within me. Like I had discovered my meaning of life. I had been granted this iPod full of druggie songs, and, by God, I was going to use it like the weapon of awesomeness it was. I alone could save my sister and I, and in turn, save China. And Atlantis.



I went through the entire discography of Sufjan Stevens, Fleet Foxes, Mando Diao, Sigur Ros, and Blind Pilot, trying to find the trippiest, most calming music I could to lull my sister and I to sleep. We certainly felt high. But Gram's snores punctuated the music. She even snored to the beat, as if mocking us.

At fourish or so in the morning, I curled into a fetal ball and meekly accepted defeat.