Blue's alarm clock was his best friend and his worst enemy. He counted on the thing to wake him up, rescuing him from countless horrors that unfolded, nearly nightly during his slumber. Unfortunately, setting it meant that it was bedtime and bedtime meant more dreams. Even his "Happy Dumm-Dumm" pajamas couldn't protect him from the sadness and uncertainty that haunted every nightmare.
Blue wished for normal nightmares. A dragon, swooping down from the sky, breathing fire and clawing at him from the smoky aftermath of its own exhalation would have been a welcomed experience. At least a dragon can be fought. You could lunge at him with your sword or take a swing at him with your stick, for example. That actually sounded like fun to Blue.
How about a plane crash or maybe a disaster at sea, he asked himself regularly, reasoning that he could always find a parachute or a life preserver. There was actually something he could do about it. He would be able to react. That was it. That was the horror of the nightmare.
He had thought about it long enough to understand the root of the nauseating emptiness he felt upon waking. There wasn't a single thing he could do. Not for himself, and often, even more frustratingly, he couldn't help them.
They were an interesting group. It can be said with a degree of certainty that you would never meet such a group ever in your life, even if you lived to be as old as Blue's great-grandmother who at the age of eighty-five, still played tennis with women half her age. In fact, it is unlikely that you would ever meet any of the beings with whom Blue had become familiar.
There is the man who is sometimes a woman, who sits in a room, at a desk, waiting to teach Blue something every night. The man who is sometimes a woman goes by many names, among them are Sophocles, Aristotle, Buddha, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Confucius, Mother Theresa, Cleopatra, Queen Victoria, Sir Isaac Newton, William Shakespeare, Carl Jung, John Lennon, Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy and Abe Vigoda.The room in which the man who is sometimes a woman sits is at the top of a rather lengthy staircase. Inexplicably, the man who is sometimes a woman is able to greet Blue every night to tell him what they are going to study that evening.
The subjects are just as varied as are the personas of the man who is sometimes a woman, and contrary to assumption, not all lessons are taught by the most likely persona. For instance, Confucius was preparing a lesson on applied physics while Karl Marx planned to show Blue how to make home-made ice cream. Planned is truly the operative word here and this is, ultimately, the source of the frustration.
Between Blue and the accumulated knowledge of humankind's existence stands a seventy-five foot tall, living peanut.
Anyone would be terrified of a seventy-five foot tall, living peanut if it could breathe fire, fly around or smash things up a bit.
Blue's peanut simply blocks the doorway to the man who is sometimes a woman. There is nothing simple about it, really. Blue has been trying to reason out why he has been blocked, night after night, for years. He has asked the peanut and the peanut has responded.
The peanut doesn't know. The peanut only knows that Blue is not allowed to pass him, Blue is not permitted to reach the man who is sometimes a woman. The other piece of information that the peanut was able to provide would have been great news if Blue hadn't already tested it to his own dissatisfaction. The peanut told him that he is not allowed to hurt Blue. Hurt is defined as "to cause bodily injury to; injure". Blue felt that the giant peanut hurt him. To this day, you could not convince him otherwise that being scooped up, ingested and eventually vomitted to the location from which you had been previously scooped, could be viewed in any way other than that of being hurtful. Blue told the peanut that shortly after pulling himself up from a pool of extra chunky bile. The giant nut asked him if he had any broken bones. Blue said, "no". The nut asked whether Blue had any cuts or bruises. Blue said, "no". The nut asked Blue if he felt as though he may be suffering from internal bleeding, light-headedness or blindness. Blue said, "no". "Then you are not hurt", the peanut informed him.
Blue stared at the nut in quiet desperation. "You threw me up! You could have just swallowed me for good. It would all be over. This whole stupid thing would end!" Blue cried out in disgust. "I am sorry," the peanut frowned,"I think I am allergic to you."
"Allergic to me?! You CAN NOT be serious," Blue moaned through clenched teeth,"then why eat me?" The peanut sat dejectedly in front of the doorway. "I have to stop you, I cannot hurt you, I have no shoebox to keep you in, I must eat you."
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