I Would Not Have Made a Good Caveman

Last night at around ten ’til four in the a.m., I stumbled out of bed to assuage my body, which was resentful that I hadn’t pulled a blanket over myself and sent a ’constrict like crazy’ message to my bladder. I didn’t turn on any lights to avoid blinding myself and aggravating Alisa, who will threaten to kill you if you trifle too long in the wee hours. Unfortunately, I wasn’t alone outside of the warm shelter of my bed.

As I wobbled towards the bathroom (which is next to our bedroom at a four way intersection of as many rooms), I turned my head and heard our cat, Leto. I had a good idea of where she was but couldn’t quite make out where exactly. In the absence of any actual recognizable visual information, my addled and sleepy brain promptly began assigning great meaning to every modulating little blob of darkness and color that it could. One moment: living room. Next moment: menagerie of creepy things, only one of which could logically be a cat. Pretty soon I was convinced that I saw all the bugs I’m sure exist in our building running just out of sight. I began squinting at the seams in the floor and staring really inquisitively at a blanket on a chair attempting to resolve plaid fringe into striped cat pelt.

I’d like to say that I shook it off and went back to bed, but what really happened is that I was trapped between turning on the lights and feeling foolish (and blind) or allowing my mind to send me into hysterics and have Alisa find me the next morning asleep in the tub under a towel with a digital scale held threateningly in my hand. I chose the third option, which was to scurry like a little girl into the bedroom, shut the door quickly behind me, and put the blanket on this time. Stupid body. Stupid brain.

If this was thousands of years ago, and I was a caveman without A) relatively self-contained shelter B) knowledge that my cat was not puma-sized and C) the ablility to switch on a light and remove all doubt, I would probably have just made a policy of toughing it out and hiding under my mastadon pelt until morning. As a result, I would be sleepy all day and probably fall victim to large rocks or sabre-toothed tigers, which (unless cartoons have been lying to me) were pretty much all that was around back then besides the occasional carelessly placed volcano.

Fortunately, I live in the space-age years of the 21st century, with volcanos sensibly placed outside of residential areas, large rocks carefully placed deep in forests and under mountains, and sabre-tooth tigers stuffed and placed behind glass to roar only at paintings of prehistoric sunsets. Knowing this, I can safely say that by the 22nd century we will probably have placed all bugs in a sensible location, such as jars or the sun. And this is why I would not have made a good caveman.