This morning I woke up at eight and couldn’t go back to sleep because I was worrying–well, thinking intently–about my bank deposit that magically disappeared yesterday. I spoke with customer service last night, but my plan today was to show up to the branch where I made the night drop and, if necessary, raise hell. You know, flip tables, use words like “preposterous” and “unacceptable,” ask, “Just what kind of institution are you running here–losing people’s hard-earned money?” I actually envisioned this scene unfolding as I lay in bed this morning, all the tellers standing around stunned and apologetic as I’m threatening to “take my money elsewhere.” Then, after a moment of appropriate silence, the manager would grovel–

“Would you like that in nickels or quarters, Mr. Coker?”

Fortunately, this didn’t have to happen in reality, since just before I crawled out of bed at nine, I checked my account online one final time. A friend had messaged during the night and told me that their deposits had frequently gotten “stuck” in the night drop, so I thought, Maybe the bank will find it first thing this morning. And y’all, just like that, after all my worrying and convincing myself that the universe hated me, the money was there. Phew, that was close. Another crisis averted.

I guess you’re okay, universe. But let’s not make a habit of this behavior.

In addition to (apparently) needing time to worry about nothing, I got up early this morning to attend a three-year-old’s birthday party. When I asked his parents, my friends Aaron and Kate, why they were having a birthday party at ten in the freaking morning, Aaron said in complete seriousness, “All of his friends have naps later in the day.”

The party itself was great. It was outside at a local park, and the weather was glorious. (It’s beautiful today.) And whereas I’d planned on not eating anything at the party and generally feeling sorry for myself for being on a restrictive diet (Autoimmune Paleo), that didn’t happen either–there were plenty of fruits and vegetables for me to snack on. (Once again, life doesn’t totally blow.) However, there was one problem at the party. Aaron and Kate’s kid had a TOTAL meltdown, all due to the fact that his cake looked like a puppy dog and he didn’t think it was at all cute when his mother put a carving knife through the little doggie’s face. You should have heard him wail as Kate sliced that little sugary pooch into several (what I’m assuming were delicious) pieces. “No, Mama, no!” he cried.

“It’s okay, baby,” Kate soothed him. (Slice, slice.) “It’s not real.”

Eventually, Aaron and Kate’s boy calmed down. I think he got distracted by a football. Later when I was talking to Kate, she said, “He was up late last night.” I replied, “See, this just goes to prove my theory–nothing good happens before noon.”

When the party ended, I spent part of the afternoon overanalyzing the situation (like I do). Y’all, nobody knows what to do when a child cries. Hell, when anyone cries. For example, the whole time this adorable child was bawling and squalling, most the adults were laughing, like, “Isn’t that precious? He thinks it’s a real puppy dog. (Nom, nom, nom.)” Not that I knew what to do, but I did remember a time when I was little that something similar happened. I was maybe six or seven, and the family had gathered at the dinner table to eat cornish hens. Baby hens! Well, I was undone. I couldn’t imagine such a thing–eating an adolescent bird.

I left the table crying.

My family and I joke about this story even now, but y’all, I can still remember what it felt like to believe that we were EATING something that I thought should be my little feathery friend. (It didn’t feel good.) And if Aaron and Kate’s boy this morning felt even part of what I felt all those decades ago, then it’s no wonder he went from demure to Defcon 1 in 3.2 seconds. I mean, when you BELIEVE something, you’re locked in. (My puppy friend is being cut up and devoured!) For you, the world is falling apart, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else says or does. As Byron Katie says, “That’s the power of imagination.”

Thirty years after the cornish hen incident (or, “the cornish hencident”), I guess I still get caught up in imagination. Last night I was convinced that the money I deposited in the bank had been lost, that my world was falling apart. This morning I was sure I needed to have a confrontation, that my oratory skills and powers of vocal projection would be best used by me walking into a local bank and proceeding to flip my shit. And sure, I assume several people who read about this predicament last night thought, It’ll be fine, Marcus. There’s nothing to worry about. Maybe they even laughed, just like part of me did, the part that “knows better.” I look at what happened now and think, That’s the universe for you, once again proving to me that it’s not such a bad place to live, that things really do work out. And yet for a while most of me was caught up in a dream. Not unlike my young friend this morning with his birthday cake, I was looking at something intended by life as a gift and innocently terrifying myself instead of seeing it for what it was–something sweet indeed.