Life sometimes has a way of forcing us to deal with difficult things. It's like you're going along and everything is fine, you feel strong, you feel competent, and one little thing happens to make you turn into a sniveling scared person.
Years ago, we had a little mouse problem. Okay, it was a mice problem. Eventually, we caught about nine of them as I recall. They were getting into the basement somehow, and we've never figured out how. I was starting to get really upset, feeling creepy-crawly, and like my inner space had been violated. But at least the problem was down in the basement.
One night while sitting at my night stand, probably trying to make my pain-in-the-neck hair do something other than go straight, I just knew that there was something wrong. I turned around just enough to be able to catch a glimpse of movement in front of the closet on the opposite side of the room. There were just two humans in the house, and my husband was watching TV in the living room. I shrieked, stood up, felt trapped because the mouse was between me and the door, and I yelled, "Help. Help. Somebody help me."
The "somebody" finally showed up; he was very nonchalant about the whole thing and I was freaking out. He looked about five feet in one direction and five feet in the other and said that the mouse was nowhere to be seen. Of course, it was nowhere to be seen. I had just traumatized it with my screaming. But my powers of observation were a little better than his and I figured it out -- the mouse had gone into the closet. My husband was tired and he figured we could just deal with it in the morning. In the morning?
So I'm supposed to sleep in my bed knowing that there might be a mouse in the closet just waiting for the opportunity to come out and show itself? No way!! I told him that we could empty out the closet and I would help get the shoes out of the way. So he began handing me shoes. Pretty soon, he says, "Oh, here it is." I thought he'd do something, but he thought he'd just get one of our cats and have them solve the problem. The first cat he grabbed walked right away. The second cat did the same. Finally, he got one that showed an interest. It ran into the closet and cornered the mouse.
Then my husband says, "Ohhhh." And hiding behind the door, I say, "What?" He says calmly, "I think it's dead." And I said, "No, it's not. It's not dead." And he said, "Well, it's lying on its back and it's not moving. I think it had a heart attack." So now I'm a little more calm and he has me get a dustpan. He noticed a puncture mark in the mouse, and we knew then that one of the cats had already struck. The mouse's time was numbered. I almost felt sorry for it -- almost.
So still somewhat edgy the next morning, I headed out to my car to go to work. It was very dark in the garage, so it must have been winter. As I turned the key to start the car, something caught my eye on the dash where the heater vent was. A white moth crawled out, its little feelers going this way and that. I completely went nuts, screamed and hollered, and scared my husband half to death.
He said, "What is wrong with you?"
So he gives this kind of halfhearted attempt to get the moth but it disappears. I didn't want to leave for work, saying, "It's going to show up while I'm driving to work and I'm going to have a wreck."
It ended up being in the very back of the car, where the window meets the body of the car, and it was difficult to get out but he finally did get it.
And I thought about what he said, "What is wrong with you?" Yeah, what was wrong with me? I found out that I was emotionally fragile when it came to mice in the house. Everything felt out of control, and then within the confines of my cozy car, I felt invaded yet again. THAT'S what was wrong with me.
So I've gotten a little wiser -- I know that I have these little issues, and I know that it could happen again. Now that my husband doesn't hear as well, I'll just have to scream much louder!!!
Have a great day!
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