Who’s In Bed With My Wife?

Fate tested me and I’m not sure if I passed.

Last night a screaming Mexican delayed my highly anticipated arrival in the boodwah.  I’m talking about enchiladas, not Hervé Villechaize *.  I won’t get into the details about how I spent my time, but it took a while and it cost me.  

After washing my hands, brushing my teeth and scraping my feet I ventured down the hallway to Shangri-la.  As I moved closer I could tell something was amiss.  The light from the TV didn’t peek out from under the door of the darkened hallway.  This could only mean one thing: my wife fell asleep or the satellite was down.  Either way, my entertainment for the evening was finished.

I quietly stepped on the squeaky floorboards making sure to hit everyone in its sweet spot hoping not to wake up the dog.  I reached out for the door handle and felt… air.  It was gone and so was the door.  My head rattled from side to side.  Something didn’t compute.  Was the door open?  Is this my house?  Is that freaking Mexican knocking at my back door, again?  The answers came to me quickly: yes; yes; and not yet.  I clumsily reached out into the void and found the door to be at an angle that confirmed my suspicions.  It was open.  I knew it.

I remained still for a moment to take in my zero visibility.  After about ten minutes I closed the door and stumbled toward the bed.  I feared for my toes because a laundry basket was in the midst somewhere in the room.  I’ve encountered its kind many times before and knew of the carnage that can result from one of my piggies entangling itself in the plastic netting.

I made it to the bed eventually.  The telltale sign being the mattress brushing against my thigh.  I made it!  It felt good to know that I can navigate so well in my dwelling.  Utter darkness was no match for me.  The following information is only being revealed because it is necessary for the reader to know.  I sleep on the outside of the bed.  Therefore, by default, my wife sleeps on the inside.

I reached out to make sure the covers were out of the way for me to crawl into bed and my world changed.  I touched a hand.  A hand very different from my wife’s.  It was a different size and not as hairy**.    The hand grasped mine and I froze.  I wanted to shout or run or cry, but instead I said, “What’s going on in here?”  There was silence in the room.  It seemed as though the infiltrator feared revealing its identity.  Then the words floated through the air like the mist from Niagara Falls on a breezy day; drenching me in a not completely unpleasant way.  “Hi, Daddy.”

To many of you this might be a regular occurrence, but it’s a first for my wife and I in our almost six years of parenting.  Our son just turned four and decided it was time to share our bed.  WTF was he thinking?  Well, I’ll tell you.  As I carried him back to HIS room he said, “When I get big I’m going to sleep with Mommy and Daddy.”  In my uneducated psychological analysis I’ve concluded that he turned four and became a “big” kid and Mommy and Daddy are big and they sleep in the same bed, so he should too.  It’s either that or some sort of Oedipus Complex.  For sanity sake, I’ll go with the former.

The events that took place last night made me realize that some things in life shouldn’t be taken for granted.  Things like alone time with your spouse and night-lights.  I just hope that I nipped this nocturnal invasion stuff in the bud.  I’d hate to see what would have happened if I wasn’t delayed by the screaming Mexican.

 

Copyright Linus Mann 2009 

 

*I know he wasn’t Mexican, but I just smile thinking about the little bastard.  It’s not my fault that I spent my adolescence in the late seventies and crap like Fantasy Island was shoved down my throat via Saturday night television.

**I’m kidding snookie-pie; it was close to your size.