Dictionary

My alarm goes off and I lay in bed stretching and trying to recall last nights dreams. I haven't even opened my eyes when I hear my downstairs neighbor snoring again. It's a nice snore as snores go, a soft rise and fall of sound that could lull me to back to sleep if I focused on it. I smile a silent giggle, it seems comical that I can hear him. The sound traveling such a long way from his mouth up through his ceiling, through my floor, through my bed and finally to my ears. I wonder if his wife ever nudges him to stop.
I get up and make coffee, play music, fold laundry, open and shut many dresser drawers. My c.d. pauses and still he is snoring. If I can hear him snoring surely he can hear all that racket. What will it take to wake this man? I start to make my bed when I get an idea.
So here I am, standing in my robe holding my Websters Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language out in front of me, intending to drop it and hear all nine pounds (It's true, I weighed it on my bathroom scale) of English Language crash onto the floor. "Drop it! Drop it! Drop it!" I will myself, my arms tingling from the first signs of fatigue. I've been standing here for 2 minutes now, holding the dictionary and listening. Listening to a sound that I can only hear if everything else is quiet.
"It's 7:30am on a Friday he is probably waking up soon anyway! Drop it!"........ "You're not being mean... it's just an experiment! Let the book go!" I think over and over.
The dictionary is getting heavy in my hands, I feel the bottom cover slip past my palm, the pages tickling my fingers. "Just drop it already!" I shut my eyes tight, anticipating the sound. "Here goes!" the book is falling and just in time I shift my arms over so the book lands quietly on my bed. "Damn it! Chicken!"

I storm off to the shower disappointed in my lack of follow through. I mean what did I expect to happen? Am I going to hear him suck air, cough, and then scream, "Did that crazy bitch just drop the Webster's Unabridged Dictionary!?!" Or maybe he will come pounding on my door, "You and your dictionary! Parking lot! Now!" Or stranger yet maybe he will chuck his Webster's Unabridged Dictionary at the ceiling. Then we would take turns throwing our dictionaries and screaming insults, "Big foot!" "Grandpa!" "Cow!" "Pansy!"

What I really think will happen is the dictionary will crash, the snoring will pause, my heart will race. Then I will spend the next two weeks wondering if he hates me for being so loud and obnoxious. I'll consider finding a way to bump into him and apologize in a round about way. "Sorry if I woke you the other day, my dictionary slipped of the bed!" giggle giggle. He'll say "What? I didn't hear anything." But then I will reconsider because what if he calls me out? "It sounded more like you dropped it intentionally!" I don't want to argue with him. Better to just sweep it under the rug and forget it happened. Finally, I'll decide to make him some brownies. I mean brownies undo bad karma right? (In fact if I die someone please fill my coffin with brownies because I'm going to need them.) So I'll bake the brownies, but I'll decide to do some complicated recipe to increase the karma goodness. It will take me 3 hours to make one pan of brownies. Next thing I know I will be staring at my ceiling at 2am wondering who the hell is going to eat my burnt brownies, when the soft sound of snoring will catch my ear and I'll reach for my dictionary.