John sleeps on a narrow bed in his treasure room since his leukemia diagnosis. Two walls are book shelves, floor to ceiling, crammed full of books. The other two walls are fitted with racks of tubs holding terribly intriguing guy stuff. These rarities don’t reach all the way up so he’s hung strange paintings by me or his mother, their frames touching the ceiling.
There’s only an stringent space left for his bed where and a couple of days ago he woke UP UPSIDE DOWN IN HIS BED. His feet were where his head should have been.
This peculiar sleeping activity may be the causation or the inspiration for his awake activities. He unshops occasionally and in two ways.
Sometimes he brings an item from home, like an old tool we bought because we couldn’t imagine what it was. We’d proudly showed it to everybody who came to our home until someone finally explains its function bringing it down from bizarre to banal in treasure status. As I was saying, he brings this object to a local store with a price tag he’s carefully tie onto it. I can remember a ten inch metal tool he labeled as $204.35. He snuggles it onto a shelf between other items and somewhat quickly leaves.
I’m some what up tight so I worried. “For what?” he said, “For unshoplifting?”
He’s also been known to sneak a box of cookies or a package of pig’s testicles into someone’s shopping cart when they aren’t looking, burying it under other items so it won’t be seen until check out. Then we shop our way quickly out of the vicinity and enjoy speculating at the forth coming scenario .
I’ve worked these and other odd activities into a children’s book called, “Gracie’s Grandfather Makes Trouble” found at Amazon.    nancymauerman.com