Paul Lundgren

Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to discover a pillow is being pushed down over your face. Just like in the movies. How would you react?

Well, perhaps you can learn from me. I recently woke up to find myself being smothered, and I survived. How I escaped is less interesting than what went through my head in the first three seconds.

The human brain can perform quickly in these situations. It can sort through dozens of scenarios instantly. This is partly because our thoughts can be morbid at times, leading us to plan ahead for how to respond to things that are very unlikely to happen. We are also influenced by movies, television, books and other forms of storytelling that warn us there really are people who, randomly or premeditatedly, are stabbed, shot, strangled or otherwise rubbed out. If it happened to them, it can happen to you, right?

Being suffocated by someone pushing a pillow into your face should rank pretty low on the list of ways you might think you could be killed, even though it’s something that frequently happens on TV. It just seems so stupid. Why would someone planning a murder choose such a potentially flawed option? And why would anyone acting impulsively choose a pillow as the best available murder weapon? Are there really no blunt objects in the room? Is it really possible in the United States of America to enter a bedroom without passing a gun rack or a kitchen with a vast array of knives? Or is the murderer really limited to seeking out an extra pillow, decorative and fluffy, near the one under the head of the victim? (more…)

When I’m out walking and I see a plastic bag stuck in a tree, I always point it out to anyone who might be around and say, “Hey look, a West Duluth owl.” It’s a stupid joke that doesn’t get much of a reaction, but hey, so am I.

Making cheesy remarks might be the best action in that situation. There’s a clump of ugly garbage stuck in a beautiful tree, and my options for how to deal with it are to climb the tree or use a long device of some kind to somehow remove the bag, ignore the situation altogether, or pretend like I wanted that bag to be there all along to support the comedy of life.

I have similar statements I repeat all the time. If my childhood friend is telling me about her cancer diagnosis, for example, I’ll say, “I told you not to go swimming downstream of the steel plant.”

The tragedy behind the comedy boils down to something pretty simple: I want a clean environment, but I know that’s unrealistic. It’s also confusing, because a clean environment contains a lot of dirt. And seriously, a clean planet and a polluted planet are made up of the same things; the difference is how those things are arranged. (more…)