WHEN IT COMES TO SPOONING, I'M ALL FORK

I may be a full-fledged, red-blooded consumer, but when my wife recently attempted to sell me on the idea that a man invented spooning, well, I just wasn’t buying it.

Of course, this conversation sprung from her most recent efforts to convince me to spoon with her while we slept. And my most recent attempts to avoid the position by pretending I was a fork.

Now, I believe I am as romantic as the next guy (especially if he happens to be a three-hundred-pound construction worker), but when I go to sleep I typically need a little space. And space is the antithesis of what you get when engaged in the act of spooning. Not to mention the fact that when I’m forced to sleep on my side, I usually wake up in the middle of the night screaming: “They’ve amputated my arm! They’ve amputated my arm!”

No, for most men, spooning is sort of like being pregnant -- sure, we understand how it works but, physically, we simply can’t do it.

The issue of spooning really touches on a somewhat larger subject: The conflicting sleeping habits of men and women.

Take our house, for instance. I cannot fall asleep unless it’s below 70 degrees in our bedroom. Just can’t do it. I will toss and turn, flip my pillow continuously to the cool side (“Come to the cool side, Luke…”) and otherwise lie awake feeling like a sweathog if the temperature rises even a degree above this threshold.

My wife, on the other hand, would fall asleep instantly in Hades (not that I believe you belong there, honey). Some like it hot, and she’s definitely one of them.

So, after years of scientific study and scrupulous testing, we’ve arrived at an arrangement that seems to work for us. First, we lower the temperature below 70 degrees, which enables me to fall asleep beneath a mere sheet and blanket. Then, on the other side of our bed, my flannel-wearing wife burrows beneath a sheet, three blankets and, on occasion, a heating pad. Of course, this is our plan for summertime; in winter, things really get crazy.

Still, the arrangement tends to work okay, though sometimes when I’m feeling amorous I find myself rebuffed simply because I cannot locate my wife between all of those layers.

Another area we differ on is background noise. I prefer none. Just give me plenty of quiet and keep it coming.

Not surprisingly, my wife is partial to noise, especially talk radio. Tune in late night chit chat and she immediately tunes out. The problem is, I can’t help but listen to the conversations, regardless of how mind-numbing. Eventually, I find myself taking sides and, next thing I know, I’m calling in myself.

“Our next caller is Marc from Novi. Go ahead, Marc.”

“Okay. Well, I really think they should try and work it out. I understand why she got upset when she discovered he has a second wife back in Utah, but maybe it just means he really cares about women.”

I’ve also noticed that my wife and I fall asleep in completely different ways. Once she slides beneath all of her layers, she lies perfectly still until she passes into dreamland. Of course, the massive weight of the bedding likely has something to do with it.

On the other side of the bed, I tend to move and adjust and twitch and roll until, like a restless canine, I find just the right sleeping position.

While I squirm, I am occasionally confronted by a muffled voice issuing the following command: “Please cut that out.”

“What?” This is my pat response to many a spousal request.

“Moving around,” she will say, disregarding my innocent act. “I swear you’ve got bedtime A-D-D.”

“I’m just trying to get comfortable,” I explain. “You want me to be comfortable, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. In fact, I have just the thing for that.”

Next thing you know, I’m stuck on my side in the spooning position.

Yeah, well, I didn’t need that arm anyway.

(c) Marc L. Prey 2002
All rights reserved.

BIGFOOT EXPOSED AS A HAIRY HOAX

Another legend bites the dust.

Word came last week with the passing of eighty-four-year-old Ray Wallace that the lifelong prankster was responsible for the “Bigfoot” phenomenon that has fascinated and perplexed people in this country for more than forty years.

According to his family, the fun-loving Wallace ignited the myth when he wore a pair of sixteen-inch wooden feet to make tracks around a construction site in Humboldt County, California, in August 1958.

After construction workers reported the tracks to the local paper, the front-page story of a huge, primitive man identified only as “Bigfoot” made national news and quickly became imbedded in the nation’s psyche.

Wallace soon grew fearful of the backlash that might arise if the Bigfoot phenomenon was exposed as a hoax. So he did what any enterprising American might do -- he milked it for all it was worth.

The Wallace family has now admitted the jokester made phony recordings of Bigfoot sounds and fake photos of Bigfoot dining on elk and frogs. The most famous recording of Bigfoot in the wild -- the so-called Patterson film -- was allegedly set-up by Wallace. In 1967, he reportedly told Roger Patterson that he might spot Bigfoot in a wooded area near Bluff Creek, California, then sent someone to the location in a Bigfoot costume. The grainy images of an erect, ape-like creature caused a significant uproar.

Though I was only a small child at the time, I have a hazy memory of the film, possibly from a television news report. In my mind I see the tall, dark creature in a clearing, moving quickly away from the camera. Before he disappears into the surrounding woods, I seem to recall a moment where he looks back, as if to say: “If you see any others like me, send them this way -- particularly if they appear to sport a pair of furry breasts.”

Over time, the Bigfoot legend has proven extremely popular -- ranking on a par with the Himalayan Abominable Snowman, the Loch Ness Monster and anyone born with webbed feet.

But now that Sasquatch has been exposed as a hoax, I feel somewhat let down. Like when I learned the man with the foul breath and wondering eye wasn’t Santa Claus but rather an unemployed, recently-divorced autoworker.

Next thing you know, we’re going to discover the Loch Ness Monster was really a late night swimmer with a bad case of scoliosis. And the people sporting webbed feet aren’t really descendants of an ancient race of duckmen but actually the victims of a horrible Superglue accident.

If I sound a little bitter, well, the truth about Bigfoot may have hit a nerve. Though I tend to approach these things with a healthy dose of skepticism, a small part of me wanted to believe. You see, ever since the broadcast of that grainy film I have been a Bigfoot fan. The idea that an eight-foot-tall, hairy beast-like man could manage to avoid capture, as well as the NBA draft, for lo these many years really struck a cord with me.

Living on the edge of the civilized world, watching our daily foibles with a hairy smirk, never having to send out Christmas cards -- there seemed to be something special about this legend.

Perhaps it was the existence of something wild and unknown in the middle of the well known and mundane. I believe we need a little mystery in our lives, a sprinkling of the unexplained, a smidgen of the supernatural. It helps to keep us humble and on our toes. As we map our genes, clone our housepets and fill in our missing links, that mystery slowly disappears. Eventually, we will be left with nothing but cold, hard facts.

The world can be a scary place, but when there’s a little mystery in it, there’s also a little hope.

Today, there’s one less mystery in the world.

So, yes, Virginia, there really was a Bigfoot. His name was Ray Wallace.

(c) Marc L. Prey 2002
All rights reserved.