5.29.2011

i was just watching tv


I've never met a woman who isn't terrified by the shower scene in Psycho. To this day, I pull back the shower curtain when I get home--almost every day, but especially when it's dark outside--to make sure there isn't a psycho (for lack of a better word) lurking behind it. One time when we still lived in New York, Alex thought it would be funny if he hid behind the shower curtain to "scare" me when I got home. Here's how it went down: unbeknownst to me, he was several paces ahead of me on the sidewalk and saw me round the corner to our apartment as I was returning home from work. At that moment, he decided to sprint up the stairs (we lived in a walkup, of course) to beat me inside. I knew something was awry the moment I stepped into the apartment, because in his haste to secure his hiding spot Alex had forgotten to deadbolt the door. When I walked in, I headed straight for my go-to where-would-a-crazy-person-be-hiding-in-my-apartment spot, and you can imagine the fear that struck me when I pulled back the shower curtain to find a panting, sweaty Alex. My heart almost stopped and I began sobbing uncontrollably. 

The reason I bring up this story is to remind us all how [freaking!] scary it is for someone to sneak up on you in shower situations. Tonight, as is customary on the weekends, I got in the shower after putting the kids to bed. Everything was fine until I was toweling off and saw the discreet turn of the door knob on the bathroom door. My stomach dropped. A million things must have raced through my head at that moment (Did I lock the front door? Where are the kids? What's my most valuable weapon right now?) none of which was: "Oh, it's just Catcher. He must have gotten out of bed and heard me showering and wants to say hi." But of course it was just Catcher. And he had just gotten out of bed. And when I asked him what he was doing, he said "I was just watching TV." The actual scary part of this story, though, is that I had left the TV on the Women's College Softball Super-Regional that Alex is working tonight, and that's what Catcher was watching. Yikes!

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