Some of the people who think they know me the best may be surprised by this next bit: I was once a suspect in a bombing. Nope, I’m not kidding. At the time I was quite surprised and if I’d had any sense, probably should have been horrified at the implication.
Back in my sophomore of year of college, the campus Security Chief tracked me down and asked me to come to his office about an incident that had occurred over the weekend. That Saturday, someone had flushed an M-80 firecracker down one of the toilets on my floor in the dorm. I’d seen the pieces of porcelain all over the hall the following morning and by late-morning there was a rent-a-cop standing guard over whatever evidence may have remained. At some point the campus authorities decided to treat the incident as a full-fledged bombing.
So what made them suspect me? Right after the explosion, most of the people living on that floor rushed out into the hallway and during the investigation, somebody realized that I wasn’t one of them. So where was I? Off at a party? Laughing maniacally at the destruction? Planning more mayhem? None of the above! I was sound asleep!
My ability to sleep through things is pretty much the stuff of legend. According to Mom, somewhere around the start of my freshman year of High School, it was like someone flipped a switch and suddenly I just wouldn’t wake up^*. And one roommate reported the time I jumped down from my loft bed, turned off the alarm clock, and jumped back up, all in one motion, and all without waking up. Alarm clocks, fire trucks, etc. I slept through it all.
I don’t know whether they believed me about sleeping through the explosion, but I never heard any more of it. Seven years later, while living in Nevada, it wasn’t until I asked a pair of coworkers what they were talking about one afternoon that I found out I’d slept through an earthquake.
^*For the record, although Mom did have trouble waking me for school, I wasn’t the absolute most difficult. That honor goes to Steve who once had a glass of cold water poured over his head.