Bedtime Came Too Soon

It was almost time for bed.

     I was brushing my teeth, getting ready to floss, when I wondered who invented flossing. Someone who cornered the string market, I reckoned, and then didn't know what to do with it.

     My ten-year-old granddaughter walked into the room. 

     "Grandpa, look," she said, holding two long clumps of hair out of each side of her head in a straight line. "I come from the future with my big, bug-like antennae!" 

     Before I could tell her no, she was jumping on my bed. She's growing up, but she's still a little girl at heart. 

     She was jumping up and down, up and down, when suddenly she fell forward onto the comforter that was crumpled at the end like a giant pillow, pretending she was dead. We had a good laugh over that, then she got up and started jumping again.

     "My heart!" she cried, clutching her chest with one hand, falling forward again. 

     When she got up, I told her to take off her glasses, because she could hurt the bridge of her nose. 

     She kept jumping up and down, then falling forward and pretending she was dead, and each time she got sillier and sillier, more dramatic. 

     She pretended to be an old lady, barely hobbling forward, then stopped, a look of panic on her face. 

     "Grandma, are you okay?" I asked her, playing along. 

     "I see a light," she answered. "and somebody's saying something."

     "What are they saying?" 

     "They're telling me to turn it off, because I'm using too much electricity." 

     Bedtime came too soon after that.