Medicine, in the night

Growing up, I thought that the cupboards and medicine cabinets stocked with so many different little rattling bottles and such were a bit weird. I wondered why there was always so much stuff in there.

And I remember, for some odd reason, the sound of someone stumbling to the bathroom in the middle of the night, fiddling around to find some noisy container, shaking something out of it, and heading back to whatever bed they crawled out of. (It was mostly the adults or grandparents – “the old people” – doing this).

Tonight, I found myself trying to quietly enter the bathroom, dig through the cupboard to find the headache medicine amongst the basket of once-used “pink stuff”, bug spray, allergy relief, etc; and to shake out just one of a crowd of those little pills, and quietly make my way back to the room.

Somehow, I found myself listening to all of these sounds from outside my own perspective and I realized what was happening: I now fully qualify for the “old person” award, given out by my 10-year-old self. Thanks, self.