Apr 5, 2021 3 min read

I fell asleep on the couch the other day, lights on, television blaring. I don’t know how it happened. I have believed myself to be a light sleeper. Apparently, I believe a lot of goofy things.

While I dozed, Hulu went on without me. It picked a show I would never watch. I woke up to murder noises. Why it chose to go from cartoon sitcom to a documentary about a killer is beyond me. I don’t understand the algorithm. Maybe the correlation from “Bob’s Burgers” to someone being chopped to pieces isn’t that far of a stretch. Both stories made references to meat grinders.

A few minutes later, I was under the covers, in the dark, in complete silence, and I couldn’t get back to that Zen state I had in front of squawk box with the lights on. Now my eyes were wide open. Every sound I heard was a potential murderer lurking around my house.

Side note: In further proof that I’m more of a sitcom guy, I’ve named my house Ranch Devereaux.

But I digress, like I do. There were weird noises all around me that frightful night. In an ironic twist, tremendous winds caused a welcome sign on the porch to violently knock on the wall. It sounded like a murderer was demanding that I open the door so he could come in and kill me.

In this scenario, the murderer is nice enough to knock, and not break in and kill me. That would be much too rude. He would be a killer with a sense of propriety.

I pictured it would go something like this.

The murderer would say, “Let me in!”

I would say, “Why?”

He’d say, “To chop you into little bitty pieces like they did on that show you just watched.”

I’d say, “I wasn’t really watching it. I just woke up to it.”

He’d say, “Just open the door, it’s really windy out here, dude.”

I picture him as somewhat of an affable guy for a psychopath. Someone who would put a tarp down so they don’t get blood on the carpet. A gentleman.

I can’t even be angry at Hulu for keeping me up all night. It’s easy to land on a murder show. There are so many of them.

I don’t get the murder show craze. I have friends who watch the shows and listen to the podcasts, every crime-filled episode. You can find shows about wives with knives, nuns with guns and moms with bombs.

I don’t want to find America’s Most Wanted hiding in my lilac bush. Let the experts find the criminals. I’m not going to be hunting for murderers at Shop ‘n Save. Besides, my facial recognition skills are not the best. I can’t tell Bill Paxton from Bill Pullman (see www.paxtonorpullman.com).

The next morning, I took down the welcome sign. Until I can affix it to the wall without it banging all night long, it is a most unwelcome welcome sign.