Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to discover a pillow is being pushed down over your face. Just like in the movies. How would you react?

Well, perhaps you can learn from me. I recently woke up to find myself being smothered, and I survived. How I escaped is less interesting than what went through my head in the first three seconds.

The human brain can perform quickly in these situations. It can sort through dozens of scenarios instantly. This is partly because our thoughts can be morbid at times, leading us to plan ahead for how to respond to things that are very unlikely to happen. We are also influenced by movies, television, books and other forms of storytelling that warn us there really are people who, randomly or premeditatedly, are stabbed, shot, strangled or otherwise rubbed out. If it happened to them, it can happen to you, right?

Being suffocated by someone pushing a pillow into your face should rank pretty low on the list of ways you might think you could be killed, even though it’s something that frequently happens on TV. It just seems so stupid. Why would someone planning a murder choose such a potentially flawed option? And why would anyone acting impulsively choose a pillow as the best available murder weapon? Are there really no blunt objects in the room? Is it really possible in the United States of America to enter a bedroom without passing a gun rack or a kitchen with a vast array of knives? Or is the murderer really limited to seeking out an extra pillow, decorative and fluffy, near the one under the head of the victim?

I suppose maybe the murderer is thinking that suffocating someone with a pillow is quiet compared to a gunshot, and any screaming will be muffled. But leaving the murder weapon behind is kind of sloppy, and I can’t imagine a villain exiting the house with a pillow and tossing into in the river. But I guess if I ever see someone on an overpass tying a cinder block to a Tempur-Pedic I’ll be sure to notify the proper authorities.

Usually the suffocator is known to the suffocatee. Pillowings on TV often happen at a hospital. Either a loved one is putting someone out of misery or a criminal is silencing a potential witness who would have surely testified in court upon recovering from injuries but instead mysteriously stopped breathing.

When it happens in someone’s home, it’s always a big thug who smooshes the life out of a comparatively scrawny person. If a character played by John Wayne or Jean-Claude Van Damme or Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson got smothered to death with a pillow, even if he were in a hospital with 16 bullets in various vital organs, audiences would sit in stunned silence long after the credits rolled, not quite understanding what happened to the world they thought they understood.

So we tend to believe the victim under the pillow has a pretty good fighting chance, even though gravity tells us the person pushing down has a considerable advantage over the person fighting against the weight of the attacker.

Hey, you’ve seen musclebound giants the same size as Hulk Hogan bring the Hulkster to his knees in a test of strength, right? But that never meant the fight was over. Once the roar of an arena full of Hulkamaniacs filled him with superstrength, he always managed to push himself back to his feet and reverse the situation.

Sure, action movies and pro wrestling are not necessarily grounded in reality, but we do tend to believe that when we’re really angry, when we really have something worth fighting for, we can prevail against all odds. And we have to believe that, because sometimes there is no alternative than to win or go down fighting. You might as well believe you can win, because, if you don’t believe you can win, you probably can’t. And it just goes against all human instinct to think, “oh well, I guess I’m being smothered to death and have no chance to fight back, so I’ll just relax and go limp.”

None of that went through my head, of course, when I woke up to feel the pressure of the pillow on my face. There was no time for that. I had three seconds to save my life.

I used the first second to consider who my attacker might be. What did I do to make myself a target for assassination?

My first thought was that the pillower is my wife. Not because I don’t trust her or think she secretly wants to be rid of me. Not because I think she might be mentally unstable. And certainly not because I think she wants to have for herself all of the vast wealth I’ve accumulated writing essays. The reason I thought it might be my wife is that maybe she was just having fun with me. She’ll push down on the pillow and then lift it up and giggle before rubbing it back in my face. It’s just a cute joke, so I shouldn’t smash her skull with the clock radio. I need to think this through a bit.

The next likely murderer is someone random. A bumbling psychopathic idiot who kills for the thrill of it or thinks there might be a vault in the house with wads of cash and rare, valuable items.

The least likely scenario is that it’s someone who knows me and wants me dead. That’s pretty unrealistic because, come on, it’s me. I’m the modern-day Shirley Temple. I’m America’s sweetheart. Why would anyone want to harm me in the slightest?

Well, our perception of ourselves and our actions can be different from how people on the other side see it. Seemingly harmless deeds or remarks can be taken with great seriousness, misinterpreted and fixated on until nothing becomes something. Actions can have unwanted consequences never known to the protagonist.

None of us think we’re perfect or have never hurt anyone, but most of us see our own side of the story and believe we had the best intentions. Sometimes the things we’ve done make it obvious that others will be coming for vengeance, but in my case I simply thought that whether it was someone I knew or didn’t know mattered little. This pillow attack is unjust and I must summon my inner Hulk Hogan and prevail.

So in the next second I considered what action to take. I needed to take it soon, because my three seconds were almost over. I knew that once I started to make my move, the pressure on the pillow would increase and the real battle would be underway.

And if it’s not my wife clasping the pillow, where is she? Was she somehow taken away or eliminated while I slept? I thought that was unlikely. I wouldn’t sleep through that. So I was certain she must be right next to me, about to wake up during my struggle. Would she be able to assist me or would it be too dark in the room and too confusing of a situation for her to render aid in time?

Also, if she was still there, still alive, she would obviously be next in line to be attacked. It seemed I would be fighting for more than just my own life.

While all of that mattered, in the reality of the moment it didn’t. I knew I just needed to go for the attacker with everything I had. I could figure out all the circumstances later, but if I hesitated at the critical moment the fight would be lost and my life would end.

Leverage. That’s what I thought about in the third second. It seemed like with leverage I could fight my way out of this situation. The only other option might be landing a heavy blow upon the attacker, which would be difficult in the position I was in. If I tried to reach for something on the nightstand blindly I would be pretty likely to just knock it over rather than clutch it, and then I probably wouldn’t have a full range of motion to smash it against my attacker’s head with any serious amount of force. And that failed attempt could be a wasted exertion of energy at a time when my ability to breathe is restricted. Also, it felt like my arms were being held down anyway. I needed to use leverage.

I decided I should kick my legs to shake the attacker’s balance. If I were to roll us both off the bed to the floor, I would have a good chance of landing side-by-side with my foe, if not on top. I might not be strong enough to just lift the pillow off my face no matter how many Paulamanics were cheering me on. Leverage would be my only hope.

When my three seconds of thought were up, I braced to make my move. Then something suddenly occurred to me. I wasn’t sleeping on my back with a pillow over my face. I was sleeping on my stomach, facing my pillow, with a mattress providing resistance behind the pillow. There was no attacker; I was being suffocated by my sleeping position.

So the important takeaway from this story is that a lot can happen in three seconds, through the miracle of the human brain, and all of it can be really, really stupid.