In a book on the animal kingdom, he showed me a black and white photograph of an adult tapeworm, an innocuous looking segmented ribbon to my eyes.He went on to inform me that these creatures coiled around the interior of one’s rib cage which was an apalling notion in itself, but he went on to descibe how their heads made their way up into the esophagus, cutting off entrance to the stomach and devouring whatever ammount food the hapless host ingested. The result was that the victim would painfully wither away into a shrink-wrapped skeleton(thank you Mr. Cave)while the worm grew monstrous within him, presumably keen for egress.

One morning I awoke earlier than usual with all other family members asleep. I clearly recall the faint bluish grey light filtering in through the shades and being stricken with the notion that something was terribly wrong. My throat seemed to be in a state of constriction and I felt that I was suffocating. To my abject horror I felt the sharp sensation of something, very much like a finger, pressing repeatedly against my trachea from inside my throat.
All that went through my mind at the time was,” This is it…I’ve got a Tapeworm living inside me!”
I managed to scamper out of bed and down the hallway to my parent’s room where I frantically shook my father awake. After I had articulated my predicament with all the stammering exactitude a terrified child can muster, he groggily told me,” Paul…go back to bed. You don’t have a tapeworm.”

True to his word, I was not in any way being parasitized by a rapacious segmented ribbon that day. Years later I can view as the result of an overactive imagination overlapping with frightening episodes of sleep paralysis I frequently endured at that age.
My father always knew what he was doing as I believe he possessed a malicious sense of humor he most certainly would never admit to.

-Pol