It's 3:00 am and about half an hour ago, my doorbell rang.
At least I think it did, but my spouse thinks I was dreaming. I remember that I was dreaming but about eating pastries while being handed a wad of twenty dollar bills. Who interrupts a dream about eating pastries and getting free money by dreaming the door bell? Some kind of Freudian diet police?
My reaction to the doorbell ringing was swift. I woke up my husband.
And then I lay there all cozy and warm in our bed while he went downstairs to investigate. I even muttered (somewhat sheepishly), "Be careful."
It was like something from one of the sitcoms I watched when I was growing up. Except that by then it was the seventies and eighties and in the sitcoms the wives would tiptoe downstairs behind their husbands.
And the men would usually be clutching a baseball bat.
We don't keep a baseball bat by the bed. We don't even own a baseball bat. The only thing close at hand that would be the approximate size and weight one could swing at an evildoer would be the dog. Who, incidentally, wasn't barking. I suppose one could take that as further evidence that I was dreaming.
So T. went downstairs and checked the front and back doors. There was no one there.
I think that whoever it was ran away. T., as I said before, thinks I dreamed it.
Fortunately, my dear spouse fell back asleep almost immediately. He's snoring now, as I type this, wide awake. Some kind of karmic justice?
The thing is our doorbell did ring, at around this time, last Saturday night when I was out of town. It was also the night before Hallowe'en, which at least in the telling, makes it creepier. But that's a story for another blog post.
Maybe now that I've confessed, I'll be permitted to return to dreamland.
10 comments:
Thanks for your entertaining telling and for making my household feel less crazy.
At our house the midnight sweat-inducing interruptions and subsequent dangerous missions have usually involved bats, rats or fire trucks.
Nice to know I'm not alone in my sheepish, if terrified, coziness.
That really did happen to us once when we lived closer to downtown. Doorbell rang at 3am. We ignored it for a minute then got up and looked out the window. Someone we didn't recognize was leaving. Turned to go back to bed, doorbell rang again but I answered it because I'm scarier. Lee was there for backup.
It was some drunk kid with the wrong address. I told him off, went back to bed and spent an hour trying to fall asleep because I was angry. Fun!
Thanks for the solidarity, Andrea. And S'monkey: you are a better wife, braver and less selfish. ;-)
No, I think I'm just meaner.
Before Hintonburg was trendy, we had a drug dealer living two doors down. The Boy then a wee baby woke up screaming when the door bell rang at 1:30 a.m. It was, hard to miss since it rang repeatedly. The Man went to answer it and found a strung out junkie looking for a hit. She apparently mistook our 1 for a 7.
Hence, like you, when the doorbell rings, I send The Man to answer it.
I wrote the following as an email home, the year I was living in London getting my LL.M. (1995-6). You are not alone!
"Just before 6am, I was really dreaming to beat the band. I always have vivid and oddly constructed dreams and have given up trying to interpret them. It started with 'X-files' and I found out that Scully is really an alien and a male. She didn't know this however, so it came as a big surprise to her. Her parents were also there and surprise! they turned out to be Superman's parents. Then it switched to something about hamsters, then something about gardening, and as I woke up I realized that I had assimilated the sound of our doorknocker into the dream.
I lay there and thought I must have awakened because my bladder was full (which it was). I also thought it seemed quite light out but the light didn't seem "right" somehow. (I interject to say I'd left my bedroom door open to let air in, which I don't usually when Celia is here. My bedroom door faces toward the street.) Suddenly, "the light" went off and that's when I realized that it was the automatic light downstairs that goes on when someone comes up to the front door. I looked at the time and it was 5:50am. I then knew that the doorknocker sound really HAD been the doorknocker. I wondered why "they" hadn't rung the doorbell. I got worried. I thought maybe it was the neighbour trying to tell me the cat was dead.
I finally got up and put clothes on and crept downstairs. You can't see out the front door because the glass is that thick wavy stuff but I could tell there wasn't anyone there. I remembered that the automatic light stays on for quite a long time, so whoever it was had left long ago. I checked the kitchen but the cat was out. I unlocked the front door and peered out into the mist. No one. I went back upstairs, had a pee and went back to sleep.
When I finally got up at 9, I went down first and checked and sure enough, there was the cat, sleeping by the radiator. I woke him up and felt him all over and as far as I could tell, there wasn't a mark on him. I gave him breakfast and then had my "shower", etc. So nothing ever came of the adventure. I wonder if it was maybe a burglar just "testing" to see if he could get in. Who knows."
Thanks for sharing you guys!
Thanks for the laugh. Creepy laugh, yet I snorted. Especially at the dog.
Weird . . . but great of your hubby to go down and check anyway.
What a strange (but well told) story. Isn't it irritating how it seems husbands can always fall back to sleep so quickly>
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