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11:30 p.m. Thursday, June 17, 2009. If you'd like a summary of my babysitting today, just take my six previous posts of Grandpa Babysitting, delete all references to illness, death, and horror, and average what remains.

That's it.

Leo slept, ate, peed, pooped, played, and smiled, and except for the lack of a nap Grandpa did the same.

Oops!

Sorry, I know, I know, way too much information.

I apologize.

But the more interesting drama for the past two days has been taking place in my dreams, no, not in my dreams, in my nightmares.

Night before last I found myself sitting a pew, yes, a pew—don't ask me why—between the comedian Milton Berle at about age fifty and another comedian about sixty whose face I could not quite place but who I now know was the silent film star Buster Keaton.

There was a roast of some kind going on, but that entertainment was not in my dream. In my dream, Berle was taunting Keaton sitting just to my left in our pew. Berle would lean across me, even stand on occasion to get closer to Keaton, make a joke at Keaton's expense, and then laugh loudly at his insult.

Keaton's shtick was deadpan.

Not once did he crack a smile. He would listen solemnly in silence to taunt after taunt from Berle and then reply with single syllable.

I couldn't quite understand what either of these men was saying. Berle would howl with laughter and resume his comedic vituperation.

I said nothing, did nothing, simply turned my head from side to side to follow the action like a tennis match.

The scene changed.

Six or eight people who had been at the roast were waiting in line to greet the two hosts of a party. I could see only the first host and I didn't recognize him. When people got to the head of the line they embraced each host and gave him a big hug.

I was third in line.

I hugged the first man, patted him on the back, and moved on. I hugged the second man and patted him on the back.

When I released him and stepped back, I realized the man was O.J. Simpson. I was startled, completely discombobulated, and felt instantly awkward, but I knew the look on my face expressed only that I was puzzled.

What the—

O.J. smiled at me, broadly, obviously pleased by my reaction, perhaps by the success of this deception that had somehow managed to get me to embrace him and to hug him. His hands still clasped my upper arms in a gesture of familiarity and affection, our faces only a few inches apart.

He grinned.

"You may remember me," he said in almost a whisper. "I used to play football."

Feeling uncomfortable, awkward, lost, and lost for words, I could only stand there, trapped in this celebrity vignette, looking confused, looking right and left for any clue to comprehension, for any way out.

I woke up.

The next night I found myself in a room full of Nazis who had discovered my identity and were preparing to torture me. I thrashed about their mountain cabin, doing my best to destroy papers and other odd items of evidence.

Of what I do not know.

I grabbed something that looked like a length of extension cord, perhaps it was a reed, and tried to stuff it into my mouth and chew it to pieces.

I failed.

Two men yanked it from my mouth and pinioned my arms. A third, obviously the leader, laughed at the futility of my squirming and struggling to free myself. To my horror he poured gasoline on me from a small red plastic can.

My hair and the left shoulder and arm and breast of my gray suit were drenched and he laughed again. I prepared myself for unimaginable pain.

I thought of Thich Quang Duc, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk whose self-immolation in the streets of Saigon in 1963 is the subject of a famous news photograph.

I steeled myself for fire.

The scene suddenly changed and I saw on the floor the severed hand of the man who had been about to ignite me. The stump of wrist was red with blood.

Had I done this?

I wasn't sure.

Who?

How?

Again the scene changed.

I was a passenger in the front seat of a driverless car that had just sailed off the edge of a mountain road and over the steep precipice of a cliff and now in superslow motion was falling, falling, falling, falling,  falling down.

I curled up, I brought my knees up over my stomach, my elbows together over ribs and chest, and with my arms, my wrists, and my hands I protected my face.

I prepared for impact.