The Enlarger

One of the hardest things for me is to shut off my enlarger. Some of you may be familiar with the enlarger, or you may have one yourself. This device comes on late at night when you are trying to go to sleep, or in my case, go back to sleep.

The enlarger operates on its own, taking my thoughts and running them through the machine, over and over again, taking small problems and making them apparently insurmountable. Eventually, getting any more rest is completely out of the question.

What really bothers me is that the only way to thwart the enlarger is to get out of bed, drink a glass of milk followed by a big glass of water and then to watch late night/early morning television for an hour or so. TV is so bad at this time that my brain obsesses about things like why young women would permit themselves to be videotaped for Girls Gone Wild or have a blind date accompanied by a video team, why would anyone want to watch this, why this stuff is allowed on television, and what this says about us as a society.

Eventually, I get tired enough to go back to bed, only to be wakened thirty minutes later because all those fluids have passed through my system.

It becomes a vicious cycle.

I have tried a variety of techniques to avert the enlarger, but none have been terribly effective. What I need is someone to come in and disconnect it entirely.