Al the Alien Discovers Idioms
    
It was two in the morning, and my roommate was trying to wake the dead. And no, I am not speaking metaphorically. Al, my little roommate who had fallen out of the sky in a rocket ship, doesn’t understand figurative language. So when I told him that he would wake the dead if he got any louder, he took it as a challenge.
    
“Wake up, dead humans!” the tiny extraterrestrial menace squealed, banging on a pot with a spoon. “Earth customs are so interesting!”
    
I put my pillow over my head, trying to drown him out, glad Mom had soundproofed my room when I took up trumpet playing. I knew I had to stop him, but I didn’t want to get up. Resigned to my fate of dealing with the shrill space inhabitant until his ship was fixed, I slid out of bed and walked over to the four-foot-tall mutant hamster, grabbing the spoon before it hit the pot again.
    
“Al, this needs to stop. People are trying to sleep,” I said.
    
“You do not want to wake the dead humans?” he replied, confused. “It has much scientific benefit!”
    
“I know, but one, science has to abide by the local noise ordinances,” I explained. “Two, my room is soundproofed. And three, you can’t raise the dead with lots of noise. It’s an idiom, or something. It means you’re being too loud.”
    
The alien scratched his purple furry head and looked at me quizzically. I was used to this by now. Earth practices are still strange to him. This time though, he seemed disappointed.
    
“So,” Al asked, sadly, “I can not meet dead humans if I am loud enough?”
    
“Nope. Idioms are just words so that our sentences can be fancy.”
    
“Idiom is a human thing that means lying to sound intelligent?” he asked.
    
I paused, thinking. “Yeah, something like that.”
    
“Strange,” he replied, lying down to sleep in his makeshift bed located in the back of my closet.
    
I sighed, going back to bed myself. You need a good night’s sleep when you live with a shipwrecked alien.