Men like toys. In fact, peering through the glass at Sharper Image at the toy for the very post-pubescent male child inside is something I can rarely resist. I spent a happy half hour peering at model cars I thought looked cool, at ear hair removers that I hoped I’d never need. I gazed with fascination at the wonderful extensions to the Ionic Breeze product line. I think they have made an Ionic Breeze device for every occasion. Perhaps they could upscale to the Ionic Breeze Garbage truck, which will always smell fresh as a flower. If they take the idea, I want my percentage.

It seemed like such a deceptively simple toy. Fairly expensive, but worth it. I thought my daughter would get a kick out of it – at least I justified it to myself that way all the way home. A hundred bucks wasn’t that bad was it? Of course, there was half that again for the helium cylinder, but there was no need to blab about that to the wife.

I’d bought my own world! Okay, it was just one of those toy helium filled blimps with a couple of motorized fans on it. It appeared to be a little like an elongated globe though – a map of the world was superimposed upon the surface of the plastic. It looked like it was going to be a lot of fun.

So, home we went together for a fun evening together. With my daughter that is. I brought it in with a triumphant smile!

“Jenny, look what I’ve got!” I called to my favorite noise machine.

She, naturally curious, came over. Melissa following along behind as though tied by string. “What on earth did you get that for?” said my wife, more curious than upset. Of course, she hadn’t seen the bill, or even the blimp itself at that point. Come to think of it, for the latter part, neither had I.

“I thought Jenny would think it’s wonderful.” I replied. Feeling this was a little weak, I added, “And it’s a globe too, so we can show her where things are in the world.” I was trying hard to bolster my case.

“She’s three.” Was the flat response.

“A perfect age!” I enthused, and began to take it out of the packaging.

Actually, it wasn’t too hard to build – even the helium was pretty simple to manage. This was a fortunate thing, because my other half had watched the whole proceedings with a sardonic eye. I had the impression she was just waiting for me to do something stupid. A fate I avoided, for a few hours anyway.

What did surprise me, that the box wasn’t a good guide for, was the size of the thing. I swear it was bigger than Jenny. Must have been over three feet across when it was inflated. Still, after some tweaking to get the thing balanced, it ran like charm, whirring its way across the room.

Jenny even managed to use the controls fairly effectively – it was slow enough for her to react to it. I’d have to recommend this kind of thing as a toy for children. We played terrorize the cat, chase-mommy-out-of-the-kitchen, hit-daddy-on-the-head-when-he’s-not-looking (I preferred the other games personally, but that’s just me) and so forth. All told, it was a better success than I’d hoped, and was great fun to play with. Great fun for Jenny to play with I mean.

And so to bed. I flicked the light out, and retired. Leaving a perfectly balanced blimp in the middle of the living room.

Now, we have heat and air in the house. This causes slight air currents. I mention this as the only explanation for what happened later on.

“Sleep, those little pieces of death.” I forget who said that, but deep down I think we see sleep as dangerously close to death sometimes. Our hindbrain knows just how vulnerable we are, and is mortally afraid that something nasty is going to happen while it’s off watch.

I woke at around three in the morning, with a strange suspicion that something bad was trying to get to me. I focused, and saw a huge sinister figure looming over me, and leaning in to do unspeakable things to my sleeping form.

Just after waking up at three am, this is not the best sight to see. Regardless of how rational we believe ourselves to be, deep down in the subconscious, we know for sure that monsters are absolutely real. My brain reacted in a perfectly natural way. It hit the big red panic button, and dumped 200 gallons of adrenaline into my system. My heart rate flicked from a nice comfortable one every second or so, to a highly uncomfortable frequency, somewhat closer to that of the local FM radio station. I had to make a fast call, Fight or Flight?

So, I screamed a battle cry, (that is, I screamed like a terrified little girl), and struck the looming figure with all my might. It leapt backwards, allowing me time to leap out of the bed in defense of my wife, charging forward as it rose up from my punch, with a hint of moonlight glinting off the edge. As I leapt, I saw Africa outlined on the surface, and suddenly felt very silly. Another one of those sensations that’s out of place – this time in mid air, diving after what turns out to be a bubble of helium.

Oddly enough, later on it occurred to me that it’s amazing how fast one can shut down from such a mode too – I’m convinced that if I hadn’t seen Africa, my crazed adrenaline powered leap would have not resulted in a sprained ankle, and several minutes of whimpering in pain on the floor. This brave hero then followed that with a long painful limp to the bathroom and a good session throwing up and shaking.

I then shut the damned thing into the closet. I mean, I’ve heard people say that the world is out to get them, but that goes beyond the pale.

I slowly limped back to bed. You know, there are occasions in my life when I think that I’m the fictional character in some role playing game, and somewhere out in the cosmos I occasionally hear my player roll the dice. Okay, it’s not a wonderful analogy, unless the guy playing me has a really boring existence. But if he’s out there, and I ever find him, I swear I’ll kick his sorry little ass so hard. Tonight was one of those nights where I hated him with a passion.

You see, despite all the screaming, my dear wife had not awoken. A fact that I was slightly miffed about – is it just the man’s job to come to the rescue of the damsel in distress? Anyway, I did the honorable thing, and tried to sneak back into bed as quietly as possible, to give Melissa a good night’s sleep. I slunk under the covers, fluffed the pillows and… the dice rolled across the cosmos, and came up with a critical failure on my “sneaking into bed” roll. As I fluffed the pillows, I nudged the glass of water that was on the headboard against them. Apparently Melissa had come to bed with it, and placed it there, lurking, waiting for a nervous husband to come back to bed after a near heart attack. When I flumphed back into those pillows, as I am wont to do, I removed that support. The glass responded by pouring its contents onto my face.

I yelled, spluttered, knocked the glass across the room and sat up, dripping, onto the covers. Melissa snored at me. I looked at her in disbelief, and then, trying very hard to keep my composure, I went to the bathroom and toweled off.

I came back with an armload of towels, and patted the covers as best I could, then laid the towels out as a diaper defense, and finally, finally settled down to sleep.

Sleep was still a long time in coming. I finally drifted off…

…to be woken by a shrill scream. My wife has the habit of getting up earlier than I do, and as such she had got up, breakfasted and was grabbing a coat to get the mail from the box. A coat, which was of course, in the closet. A closet which contained a sinister sphere hovering just at head height.  A sphere that follows the draft, and is pulled out into your face when you open the door.

Somewhat to my displeasure, when she punched it, it exploded. I’m still quite put out about that. Though I didn’t actually tell her after I’d limped out of the bedroom to find out what happened. She of course had some choice words for me about putting blimps into closets for the unwary bleary eyed wife. So much for gratitude. I had woken up and attempted to limp to the rescue. So much for my knight in shining pajamas routine.

Sigh.

As for the blimp, I don’t think I’ll be replacing it. My heart can’t stand the strain. I don’t suppose you want to buy a tank of helium do you?