My Lamp is Possessed

I know it's Halloween, but I swear I'm not making this up. A few days ago, I found the perfect lamp at Wal-Mart. I'd wanted a touch-lamp next to my bed for some time, because of where the lamp has to sit. The angle is such that I can't reach the switch from bed, so if I'm sitting in bed, and want to go to sleep, I have to get up, turn the light off, and get back in bed. Inconvenient. So the other day I was at Wal-Mart and found the perfect lamp. Not only is it a 3-way touch-lamp, it's this cool metallic contemporary design, which I really like, and it'll fit in great if I ever get my room redecorated the way I want. Plus, it was only $20. So I bought it, brought it home, and set it up. It looks much better than my old lamp in that spot. This was Thursday. Thursday night, no problem. Friday night, no problem. Saturday night. At about 3:50 am, something wakes me up. I don't know if the light was already on at that point, or if it turning on woke me up, but whatever, I opened my eyes and The Lamp was on. Now, I know that doesn't sound like such a big deal, but with one's brain still half asleep, and knowing that there should be no lights on in the house, I freaked. Quietly, fortunately, so I didn't wake the other occupants of the house up. First coherent thought: SOMEONE IS IN MY ROOM. Fortunately the light was already on, which made a visual inspection quick. Nothing. Second thought: SPIDERS. If you know me, I don't need to explain. I looked at The Lamp really hard for a good five minutes. Then I decided looking at it wasn't going to fix anything. I moved a few things that were touching it, turned it off, and tried to go back to sleep. Operative word: tried. When something scares you awake, no matter what it turns out to be, it's next to impossible to get back to sleep. I have a very good imagination. And it gets even better at night. Enough said. So ten minutes after turning The Lamp off, I'm lying awake, staring at the ceiling, AND THE LAMP TURNS ON AGAIN. This time I nearly jump out of bed. I know that nothing was touching it, and I certainly know I didn't touch it. It doesn't help that my brain chooses this moment to remind me it's Halloween. At this point I decide to let The Lamp have its way. I turn on the other lights and pull out a favorite Star Wars book. The Lamp sits there. For an hour. I finally decide my brain is sufficiently distracted by X-wings and the cute fighter pilots who fly them to attempt sleep. 5:00 am, I turn the lights, including The Lamp, off. 5:12 am, The Lamp turns on. Now I'm more frustrated than freaked. I hit The Lamp, rather harder than necessary, three times to cycle through the brightness levels and back to off. About twenty minutes later, it's back on. I turn it off. When I wake up at about 7:30, it's on. I turn it off. A few minutes later, it turns on. I gave up. But I'm still trying to figure it out. Once it's on, it seems to be content to stay on the lowest setting. And, even though a couple of times it turned on ten minutes after I turned it off, other times it waited longer. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. And it started today. Halloween. My conclusion? It's possessed. It'd be funny if it didn't wake me up every %#$%^ time it did it.

Right now The Lamp is off. Now it's just turned on again. It's smirking at me, I can tell. Evil Lamp.


  posted by Tyria @ 07:48