Yeti breath is bad, but yeti gas is worse. The yeti had this habit of farting while sleeping that was like clockwork. He would start to fall to sleep, spooning Blue while Blue tried to sing even though the oppressive weight of the yeti's arm was crushing the very breath with which he was trying to sing right out of him, so he wheezed out the words as if singing his last breath away. The yeti liked the way it sounded and Blue knew that so he endured the pain of it rather than suffer the consequences of a wakeful yeti. When the yeti, who Blue called Walter, wouldn't or couldn't sleep, he complained. He listed everything that was wrong with the world because of mankind's stupidity. It is one thing to have to suffer the lamentations of an insomniac yeti, it is quite another to attempt to counter his requiem with optimism when everything he says is essentially correct. So, one night, Blue tried commiserating. Optimism was truly a survival technique. Optimism followed by singing, and yes, succombing to the clockwork habit was a means of survival. Blue welcomed the farting in comparison to the overwhelming depression resulting from commisseration. The clock worked like this. Walter fell to sleep. Within minutes Walter began to scratch his behind. This gave Blue the chance to slide out from the spoon of Walter's embrace. After the scratching, Walter always sat up, bolt upright, directly perpendicular to whatever surface he and Blue had been spooning on. He would open his eyes, survey the area until he saw Blue, motion to Blue that he must come to him, whereupon he would take Blue's hand, pulling him into a spooning position behind himself. When Walter felt as though Blue understood his job, namely spooning Walter back to sleep, Walter would sleep. Blue would know Walter was asleep when Walter began to fart, and the clock struck one. Blue was relieved by the farting because it meant two things. One was that Walter was now asleep and because of his massive build, Blue's feet were actually closer to the gas than any other part of his body. The other thing that the farting meant is that by the time the clock struck twelve, which it always did after the farting started and the clock striking began, Blue's alarm clock would ring.
When Blue awoke from his nightmare with Walter he always felt the same way, hollow, empty, frustrated and demoralized. Then, a brief wave of optimism would wash across his mind and settle in his heart. In that moment he was a pure boy. He was Blue, alone, awake, alive. He was at peace, breathing in the morning, thinking of nothing.
Within minutes he would hear his father's footsteps, outside his bedroom door and the feeling of peace would vanish. His mind would begin to fill with thoughts kicking the lid closed on the iron crate in which he hid his heart. "Get out here, Blue, time to eat, and I gotta leave so don't make me late", Blue's dad, Frank, would say, every day, all the time. Blue couldn't remember a day he had made the old man late. In fact, Frank would be the only one who said a word in the morning, unless his sister decided to make some stupid joke that always had a color in it like, Hey Blue, you're looking a little green around the gills this morning." Then she'd laugh and say, "get it? green around the gills, and your name is Blue?", then she would punch him. Frank would laugh and kiss her on the forehead and then he'd start listing all of his jobs for the next five days and if they were lucky he'd get another one by next week so he could make even more money which wouldn't be enough to pay the bills because he had to spend so much on the stupid kids, not you, Lisa, you're worth every penny, blah, blah, blah... That thought took about a second to pass through Blue's mind. Unfortunately it took about fifteen minutes to play out for real again today. This morning, however, it was punctuated by some good news. Lisa was going to have a recital this evening where she was going to perform "Greensleeves" which she had been practicing so beautifully for the past month on the "family's" organ which only she was allowed to play. "Oh, Blue, you're looking white as a ghost!" Lisa punched into Blue's gut as his father gently guided his head toward the wood panelled Country Squire station wagon with the hard metal thermos Blue had spent his paper route earnings on for Father's Day. Frank still talks about how nice it was of Lisa to get up early on Father's Day to brew him a nice thermos full of coffee because she was the best daughter a father could ever have. Blue can still remember the sound of the freeze-dried crystals being scooped into his gift after his sister comandeered it. Pouring the boiling water that he had prepared only seconds earlier over the crystals, Lisa closed the thermos, warning him that it was her idea and danced out of the kitchen to present the gift to Frank. Blue thought himself silly to have put so much tape on the label that said, to: Dad, Happy Father's Day from: Blue. If she had thought about it, Lisa would have written her own name on it or ripped off the label but she was too concerned with making a display of herself to cover all of the bases. Upon presenting it to Frank she boasted,"I made you coffee daddy!" Frank looked down and started reading loudly, "to:Dad from, " suddenly his voice dropped about ten levels as he finished,"Blue". Quick as a wink his voice shot up again, he held Lisa up in his arms and shouted,"My little angel made me coffee!". That memory only took a second to flash through Blue's mind but the smell of those mountain grown, freeze-dried crystals hung in the air and decided to ride along with them all the way to school.
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