Midwinter's night dream turned death approaches! Repent!

It's not fair to say I'm afraid of the dark. I just fear things while in the dark.

Saturday night, in bed at the home of the in-laws, the power went out. It was just before 1 AM, and, since I am among the lightest sleepers I know, I woke up. My first thought was, "Someone just cut the power and now they're coming in to get us." This was ridiculous for the following reasons:

1. No criminal would target a parsonage (father-in-law is a minister) as worthy of home invasion.
   
2. I may not be popular, but I certainly haven't got a host of enemies waiting to get me.
3. Most people would logically work their way through a list of some 300 possibilities before arriving at "They've cut the power. This is the end."

But this is what I do. Any noise in the night? "They've come for me." Whether from a deluded sense of self-importance or a heightened sense of stupidity, this is how I function. This is how my mind works. And this last time, I thought, "I guess we all have to die sometime. It would have been nice to live a few more years, but we don't really get to choose. I hope that last Harry Potter is nice. I would have liked to see it."

So if you're counting at home, I've gone from "They're after me! It's over!" to making my peace with death in the span of about 3 minutes. Meanwhile, all that's happened in the world is the power went out - something so routine that most people hardly think twice about it. My wife hardly stirred. Unfortunately, things got worse. After a while, I heard the unmistakable beep of a large truck backing up. Rather than think through the possibilities rationally, I immediately assumed that this was the thieves' truck, in which they would pack everything up before speeding away with a 10-year old television and pictures of Jesus.

It would be a good five minutes before I progressed down the logic tree to, "That's probably Duke Power come to fix the power." Indeed, a few minutes later the power had returned and I was still alive.

But is this any way to live? I'd like to teach my brain to not jump irrationally to the most illogical and far-flung outcome it can think of, but it I couldn't do it in 30 years, what hope do I have now? I guess I'll just have to wait until the next time I wake up in the night, mistake a coat hanging from the wall with another thief in the night come for my comic book collection, and try again.