I don’t know whether no one will admit it for fear of being thought strange, or whether they are being honest and actually aren’t aware of that place that I as of late think of as the Twilight Zone. I was aware of it from my earliest years and took it for granted that everyone else knew it as I did.

I always see it when I think about it. For days at a time, though, I never think about it. Like most adults I know, I have bills to pay and telephone calls to make and &8220;troubled by many things,&8221; sometimes drop quietly off to sleep without knowing I’m going to.

The twilight view usually comes to me when I deliberately approach sleep. I turn off the lift, close my eyes and at once I am in a new world. Last night I was surrounded by jungle.

Yards of green and swaying foliage curtained me. No, I wasn’t dreaming.

I was startled, but not frightened. It seemed so real that I actually opened my eyes and turned the light back on.

No jungle, no swaying vegetation. My room was exactly as it had been when I turned off the lights.

It happens most often in the summer time. As in the winter time I read in bed. If the book falls from my hands a time or two, I decide I’m really sleepy and turn off the light.

I feel, though, that my eyes are still open, but the outdoors beyond my window has undergone a change.

When I was reading I was aware of the tree branches against the sky and sometimes the slight movement of branches if there’s a breeze. But, when the light is turned off, the sky takes on a

faint tint of lavender, there are no trees, but there are hedges of flowers.

Again, it seems so real that I turn on the lights to peer out, but what I have seen or thought I had seen is not there. Again, I wasn’t asleep or I wouldn’t have turned on the lights. I can’t help thinking sometimes that there are two worlds and that one of them exists only in our imaginations.

I never wanted to go to bed when I was a child and in the summer time when I wasn’t going to school every morning, I was pretty much allowed to stay up or sit up in bed and read.

During school times, though, I was expected to be in bed by 8:30 or 9 o’clock at night.

Reading was not encouraged, though if I were still awake after my parents went to bed, the book under my pillow and a trusty flashlight got me cozily through the night.

Even without book or flashlight, I had amusement visiting what I thought of as &8220;the quiet place.&8221; In my mind it consisted of a sort of a cave in the backyard. It bore no resemblance to a cave and was totally hidden from everyone but me. It was extremely deep and I went down two flights of stairs into a large room.

The room was filled with my dolls, only they were alive and could talk. Also all the cats and dogs that had over my brief years been, while they lived, part of the family. They, too, could and did talk.

Relatives whom I had loved and missed when they died were there, alive and happy to share with me their amusement that I knew they were still with me when the grown-ups were so mistaken about it.

My conversations with them had nothing of the seance about them. They asked about my schoolwork, inquired as to whether or not I’d made the honor roll this quarter.

It reminded me to be sure to practice my piano lessons.

&8220;After all, your father pays good money so you can have music lessons.&8221;

I suppose it was the reference to the money that made the conversations seem so real to me. My parents never mentioned the money they spent on me, they just wanted me to do whatever I did well.

And I fear I didn’t always live up to their expectations.

I am gifted with friends, who always do things well, in an orderly and tidy fashion. I hesitate to say I envy them because it doesn’t seem right to envy friends. I do say that in many ways I would love to be more like them.

If I were to write an autobiography it would be short. I would simply sum me up by saying, &8220;When I walk through a room, small objects fall from tables and shelves.&8221;

Title of the book would be &8220;Confessions of a Lurcher.&8221;

(Love Cruikshank is an Albert Lea resident. Her column runs Thursday.)