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I thought of something today. I told Becca and she said she thought it was a good idea. Maybe, if we could see who had their phones on, it wouldn’t be so hard to reach people. Kind of like the internet. But then maybe there should be an ‘invisible’ option too. So, if people think your cell phone is off, they won’t try and call you. You can be invisible when you don’t want to be bothered, or when you’re at the movies. I remember last summer when Samantha kept trying to call me while I was on vacation, but I already knew what she wanted. She plays the guitar, but she doesn’t know how to fix the strings. Everyone should know how to fix the strings if they play the guitar. She wanted me to fix them for her, but I don’t even play any instruments. I bet I could if I wanted to. I know about scales, full steps, half steps, flats, sharps, whole notes, fourth notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, metronomes, octaves, chord changes, meter, augmented, diminished, forte, piano and many more things that aren’t important right now. I learned how to fix guitar strings when I was little and my dad was in a band called “Verbal Motion.” Dad didn’t think of the name, though — Roger did. Roger played the keyboard and he was always saying weird things to himself. They weren’t very popular, even though they practiced every night in the basement. They only practiced in the basement because it was the room that was furthest away from any other room in the house. They practiced in the basement because it was the furthest room from mine, but I could still hear them. Dad has been wanting to get it soundproofed ever since we moved here last August. I don’t know how he’d do that. I wonder whose job it is to soundproof rooms, a soundproofer? Dad’s band never kept me up, I stayed up because they were practicing. He played the electric guitar and he told me last month that he has given it up. He says he’s lost his chance, his youth has vanished, he’s too old to make it. My dad is forty-two years old. “Life’s too short, kid. Live each day like it’s your last” has been his general answer to many of my questions lately. I don’t ask him a lot of questions anymore. I know he hasn’t given up, though. I think I am the only one who knows. I know he hasn’t because when mom works late shifts at the hospital and he thinks I’m asleep, I can hear him playing his acoustic guitar for hours. He doesn’t play in the basement anymore. Now he plays in his room, right across from mine. It sounds much better when he plays alone. Last week, I brought him a pamphlet that said “Open Mic Night — Joe’s bar — 9pm to midnight” in big bold red letters on a blindingly yellow background. I think they copied McDonald’s colors, or maybe Gryffindor from Harry Potter. That is my favorite book. I’ve read each one seventeen times. Mom says I'm a fast reader. Well, yellow and red doesn’t really mean McDonald’s or Gryffindor. To me, yellow and red really mean happiness and passion, respectively. Dad has red, and he can have yellow if he goes to the Open Mic Night. I know he wants it, but you cannot have yellow unless you show people you already have red. He has to show everyone he’s got the red in him. Everyone’s really red inside anyways. Or maybe we’re blue because blood only turns red when oxygen touches it. That’s what Becca’s dad told us. He is the one who gave that pamphlet because he thought I had good pitch when we all went to sing karaoke together. Dad looked at it with a faint glint of hope in his eyes, and I could see it although they were nearly closed as he sighed and said “Thank You.” I knew he wasn’t really thankful because I saw it crumpled in the recycling bin the next day when I went to throw away my empty orange soda can. I took it out and saved it. Now it's in my pocket.

The "e" is "Joe's" on the pamphlet has faded, so now it looks like it says "Open Mic Night -- Jo's Pub -- 9pm to midnight." I knew somebody named Jo once. I always thought it was "Joe" and whenever I said his name I would say it but imagining it written "Joe" in my head, always. I knew him before we moved. He liked typing on an invisible keyboard at school because he wanted his own laptop for his birthday. I never knew if he got it. I think I'll send Jo a letter and I will start it with "Dear Jo" so that he knows I know how to spell his name. He used to get angry whenever a teacher would correct his work, "Great Job, Joe!" with the little smiley face that looked like the depressed cloud in the Zoloft commercials. Some people would even call him Joey. He hated that because he knew if he added a "Y" to the end of his name it would be Joy, and that's a girl's name. Maybe I'll even tell him about the idea I thought of today. His dad designs websites. Maybe he knows some people who know some people who can help me patent -- or publicize it. I shouldn't publicize before I patent though, because then it is easy for somebody --anybody -- to steal my idea. I don't want that to happen.

When I was seven (I am almost nine and a half now), Samantha's older brother, Nathan, stole my idea for the science fair. I wanted to do mine on dreams. Nathan overheard me telling Samantha -- I know she wouldn't take it from me. I worked very hard for two months, 15 days and 23 hours. I barely got any sleep the night before because I was so excited. I couldn't remember whether or not I had a dream in the one hour of sleep I did get. I don't know if an hour is enough for you to start dreaming because of REM. I learned all about REM before the science fair. REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement. Nathaniel Klietman and Eugene Aserinsky discovered it in the early 1950's. It lasts for about 90 to 120 minutes. The dreams you remember happen during REM, when your eyes move around under your eyelids. That’s how you know if someone is in REM sleep, but I don’t watch anybody sleep. I don’t think anybody would like if I watched them sleep for 90 minutes because I wouldn’t like it either. Now I know that if I go wake up my little sister, Chelsea, and her eyes are moving under her eyelids, I shouldn’t wake her up because she’s probably having a good dream. Unless she looks scared, but then she is having a nightmare and I will wake her up. We're not the only ones who have REM when we sleep, animals and birds do too. That means, Ezekiel, my Yorkshire terrier has dreams but he just can't tell them to us. I wish he could. I'd like to hear about Ezekiel’s dreams. I wonder how many hours Ezekiel dreams. We only have one and a half hours of REM sleep, but the platypus has eight hours of REM sleep. They are so lucky. I want to remember eight hours of dreaming. Eight hours of vivid and unreal, imaginary nothingness. I would have enough time to have lucid dreams if I had eight hours every night. If I could be an animal, it would be a platypus. I wouldn't want to be a dolphin, though. Dolphins get even less REM sleep time than we do. No, never a dolphin. But if I were a platypus, I could be friends with a dolphin so I could tell them about my dreams and then maybe they'd feel better about never remembering theirs. Then that dolphin would go find other dolphins using echolocation because by then it would be too dark for them to see. They'd share the dreams with their dolphin friends and the dolphins wouldn't feel so dreamless anymore. Did you knew we spend 6 years years of our entire lives dreaming? I wonder how many years I've dreamt. If everybody lived to be 100 years old and we dream for 6 years, that means that we are fully awake and conscious for 94 years of our lives. I will be nine and a half on February 18th. That means my birthday is on August 18th. If I round my age down to nine, and I have slept an average of 8 hours for 365 days, then that means I have slept approximately 26280 hours so far.