When insomnia hits at 3:00 AM I put in my earbuds and listen to books on tape. I replay old stories that I already know very well so there is no suspense left. It's like when I was a child and my mother used to read to me at bedtime. The voice of the storyteller pushes from my mind all the thoughts and worries that have kept me from sleep.
These books span many tapes (CD's) and I play copies of them on my ipod using the music app. This app will just quit (and 'turn off') when it get's to the end of each tape so I start listening in the middle of the 'tape' so that it won't keep playing and wake me up again after I doze off. I have figured out the timing, over the years, and it's usually foolproof.
The other night, after starting the story and settling my head back in the pillow I was trying to talk to someone and I couldn't hear them because of the storyteller was talking too loud. I turned the volume down so that I could hear. But as we continued our conversation the story teller was still too loud. So I pressed the pause button on the earbuds to get the story teller to shut up. The story teller kept talking and I still couldn't hear the conversation. So I pulled the earphone plug out of the ipod (this always stops whatever app is playing.) But the storyteller kept talking.
By now I was getting pretty annoyed. I wanted to hear the conversation and all I was hearing was this story that I'd heard a million times. I was annoyed enough, in fact, to wake up and really pull the plug out of the real ipod. The storyteller finally was silent -- but the conversation had ended, along with my dream.
