- May 18, 2001
- 7,854
- 344
- 126
The females in my family are going to drive me into an early grave.
Something has been knocked way out of balance deep inside my doggy?s brain. There was a time when my stout 85-pound dog Coda was fearless and intimidating, but when we moved into our new house a couple of years ago, she didn?t weather the transition very well. She can still put up an impressive and scary display for strangers who arrive unannounced at my front door, but when challenged usually melts into a frightened, whimpering baby. In particular, she has become real jumpy and nervous when she hears any unfamiliar noise. If a distant car backfires, a cricket chirps, or a couple of rabbits in the woods get it on just a little too much, it has become the norm to find Coda trembling underneath the desk or behind a couch.
Unfortunately, around here this time of year there are a lot of unusual noises in the air. Early each June, a rickety wooden shack magically pops into existence at every single road intersection in Tennessee. Each of these sheds is singular in purpose, and their appearance is a sure sign that the annual summer redneck migration is nigh. Following some deeply ingrained timeless instinct, every Billy Bob in the county grabs a fistful of dollars and packs his hollering brood in the back of the pickup. They have one goal in mind: make their way from the woods to the nearest shack to buy as many fireworks as they can carry, so they can ?blow up shit real good!? Independence Day is one of the highest, holiest holidays on the redneck calendar.
So right in the middle of the night of July 3rd, Coda started from her sleep. I don?t know exactly what it was that she heard, but I?m assuming it was some idiot in the far distance blowing off his fingers right after saying something like ?watch this!? This was the tiny loose pebble that quickly snowballed into the estrogen-driven avalanche that would threaten to sweep me way.
To a dog, The Noise is indescribably horrifying. It is the sound of worlds crashing, nails on a chalkboard, and the chilly call of death all rolled into one. As she later explained to me, hearing The Noise triggers an ancient embedded memory of when ravening dinosaurs ruled the world, snacking on her doggy ancestors. It is the sound that causes the sturdiest canine defenses to instantly crumble, leaving behind quivering, wide-eyed cowards where once stood man?s most noble friends. Upon hearing The Noise, Coda decided that her pack was being exposed to unacceptable risk, and chose to escalate the situation with management. Always the good dog, she followed household procedure to the letter: she went to the wife?s side of the bed, stuck her wet nose in the wife?s face, and began whining insistently.
The wife has been through this drill countless times before, and fully realized even before she was completely awake that the dog was full of crap. The dog has never cried about anything that actually turned out to be something. Mrs. Ned is also pretty good about following procedure, and sternly told the dog to shut up and go back to bed. Coda reluctantly obeyed, crawled back to her pad and cowered in relative wide-eyed silence. Mrs. Ned decided that since she was awake, she might as well make her way to the bathroom.
About halfway down the hall between our room and the bathroom, she was startled to also hear The Noise. It was coming from downstairs. Obviously, the dog wasn?t as full of it as she had previously thought.
While few husbands know what it sounds like, every married woman has at some time heard The Noise. To them, The Noise is also indescribably horrifying. It is the sound of chainsaw-wielding rapists tossing furniture around in their search for valuables in some other room. Sometimes it is the sound of a grizzly that has broken down the front door in a blood-crazed frenzy. At other times, it is the expression of a newfound belief in ghosts and other things that want to suck your soul completely dry. Mrs. Ned quickly made her way back to the bedroom. Finally, all the muted whining and frantic shuffling caused me to wake up to the sight of Mrs. Ned locking the bedroom door behind her. Fairly confused and concerned, I asked what was going on. In near hysterics she tried her best to whisper: ?someone is downstairs!!!? She rummaged around in her purse for a while, then handed my testicles back to me. Knowing how much controlling them means to her, I began to seriously consider that for the first time since we got married, there was a good chance that there actually was someone downstairs. A chill sprinted down my spine.
Needing to make some decision quickly, I took an unprecedented step in resolving this type of situation: I told her to get my gun. My calculating male mind had already assigned a fairly low probability that this would actually turn out to be an murderer, but a gnawing doubt had been introduced. A slight panic began to materialize.
Naturally, I kind of wanted to get the gun in my hands in a hurry. Rushing around, I first had to remember where I had hidden it in the closet. Then, much to my ?delight?, I found that it was buried under a stack of clothes and other junk that the wife had piled there. Once it was finally in my hands, I had to remove the trigger lock, which meant that I had to find the key. At the end of a frantic but successful search, my nervous fingers fumbled around and found that getting the key in the hole was most likely even more difficult than robbing the vault at the Bellagio. What seemed like days later, the gun was finally unlocked and I was ready to boogie. In the 5 to 10 minutes that it took to get to this point, a determined intruder could have kicked in the door, raped me and my wife, robbed us, shot us both, then raped us again, all while my suddenly not-quite-so-devoted-anymore guard dog watched silently from under the bed.
I slowly unlocked the bedroom and made my way downstairs. In my mind, I was a bad, stealthy killing machine, ready to confront the Manson family if need be, in order to protect my family. In reality, I was a half asleep computer geek, wearing nothing but my boxers and a severe sunburn, in extreme danger of shooting myself with the gun that I was waving around. I was terrified, my heart was racing, and my eyes were as big as saucers. I cautiously took cover behind lampshades and decorative pillows as I moved from room to room. I checked the windows; all were locked and none were broken. I flung open closet doors and thrust the barrel of the gun inside; my jackets put their hands up and surrendered. I jiggled the doorknobs on all my outside doors; they were locked as expected. I even checked the kitty door in case a wandering skunk had found its way inside; still nothing ? its lock was secure. I finally allowed myself to breathe, and tried to tuck my heart back into its proper position in my chest. The wife, sensing that all enemies had fled for their lives from her brave husband, walked into the kitchen with tears on the verge of escaping.
I love my sleep more than a lot of people, and was pretty grumpy about the whole affair. A smart man would have bitten his tongue, but that big chunk of my brain that regulates stupidity was determined to not let such a ripe opportunity pass. Right before I handed my balls back to the wife, I used them one last time to make a snarky remark about how all the women of the house needed to relax so I could get some well-earned sleep. As soon as it escaped my lips, icy coldness filled the room. Sex probably won't be an option for a while now.
Later as I lay wide awake in bed and prayed for the adrenaline to die down, I could only wonder how I had emerged from this situation as the bad guy.
Something has been knocked way out of balance deep inside my doggy?s brain. There was a time when my stout 85-pound dog Coda was fearless and intimidating, but when we moved into our new house a couple of years ago, she didn?t weather the transition very well. She can still put up an impressive and scary display for strangers who arrive unannounced at my front door, but when challenged usually melts into a frightened, whimpering baby. In particular, she has become real jumpy and nervous when she hears any unfamiliar noise. If a distant car backfires, a cricket chirps, or a couple of rabbits in the woods get it on just a little too much, it has become the norm to find Coda trembling underneath the desk or behind a couch.
Unfortunately, around here this time of year there are a lot of unusual noises in the air. Early each June, a rickety wooden shack magically pops into existence at every single road intersection in Tennessee. Each of these sheds is singular in purpose, and their appearance is a sure sign that the annual summer redneck migration is nigh. Following some deeply ingrained timeless instinct, every Billy Bob in the county grabs a fistful of dollars and packs his hollering brood in the back of the pickup. They have one goal in mind: make their way from the woods to the nearest shack to buy as many fireworks as they can carry, so they can ?blow up shit real good!? Independence Day is one of the highest, holiest holidays on the redneck calendar.
So right in the middle of the night of July 3rd, Coda started from her sleep. I don?t know exactly what it was that she heard, but I?m assuming it was some idiot in the far distance blowing off his fingers right after saying something like ?watch this!? This was the tiny loose pebble that quickly snowballed into the estrogen-driven avalanche that would threaten to sweep me way.
To a dog, The Noise is indescribably horrifying. It is the sound of worlds crashing, nails on a chalkboard, and the chilly call of death all rolled into one. As she later explained to me, hearing The Noise triggers an ancient embedded memory of when ravening dinosaurs ruled the world, snacking on her doggy ancestors. It is the sound that causes the sturdiest canine defenses to instantly crumble, leaving behind quivering, wide-eyed cowards where once stood man?s most noble friends. Upon hearing The Noise, Coda decided that her pack was being exposed to unacceptable risk, and chose to escalate the situation with management. Always the good dog, she followed household procedure to the letter: she went to the wife?s side of the bed, stuck her wet nose in the wife?s face, and began whining insistently.
The wife has been through this drill countless times before, and fully realized even before she was completely awake that the dog was full of crap. The dog has never cried about anything that actually turned out to be something. Mrs. Ned is also pretty good about following procedure, and sternly told the dog to shut up and go back to bed. Coda reluctantly obeyed, crawled back to her pad and cowered in relative wide-eyed silence. Mrs. Ned decided that since she was awake, she might as well make her way to the bathroom.
About halfway down the hall between our room and the bathroom, she was startled to also hear The Noise. It was coming from downstairs. Obviously, the dog wasn?t as full of it as she had previously thought.
While few husbands know what it sounds like, every married woman has at some time heard The Noise. To them, The Noise is also indescribably horrifying. It is the sound of chainsaw-wielding rapists tossing furniture around in their search for valuables in some other room. Sometimes it is the sound of a grizzly that has broken down the front door in a blood-crazed frenzy. At other times, it is the expression of a newfound belief in ghosts and other things that want to suck your soul completely dry. Mrs. Ned quickly made her way back to the bedroom. Finally, all the muted whining and frantic shuffling caused me to wake up to the sight of Mrs. Ned locking the bedroom door behind her. Fairly confused and concerned, I asked what was going on. In near hysterics she tried her best to whisper: ?someone is downstairs!!!? She rummaged around in her purse for a while, then handed my testicles back to me. Knowing how much controlling them means to her, I began to seriously consider that for the first time since we got married, there was a good chance that there actually was someone downstairs. A chill sprinted down my spine.
Needing to make some decision quickly, I took an unprecedented step in resolving this type of situation: I told her to get my gun. My calculating male mind had already assigned a fairly low probability that this would actually turn out to be an murderer, but a gnawing doubt had been introduced. A slight panic began to materialize.
Naturally, I kind of wanted to get the gun in my hands in a hurry. Rushing around, I first had to remember where I had hidden it in the closet. Then, much to my ?delight?, I found that it was buried under a stack of clothes and other junk that the wife had piled there. Once it was finally in my hands, I had to remove the trigger lock, which meant that I had to find the key. At the end of a frantic but successful search, my nervous fingers fumbled around and found that getting the key in the hole was most likely even more difficult than robbing the vault at the Bellagio. What seemed like days later, the gun was finally unlocked and I was ready to boogie. In the 5 to 10 minutes that it took to get to this point, a determined intruder could have kicked in the door, raped me and my wife, robbed us, shot us both, then raped us again, all while my suddenly not-quite-so-devoted-anymore guard dog watched silently from under the bed.
I slowly unlocked the bedroom and made my way downstairs. In my mind, I was a bad, stealthy killing machine, ready to confront the Manson family if need be, in order to protect my family. In reality, I was a half asleep computer geek, wearing nothing but my boxers and a severe sunburn, in extreme danger of shooting myself with the gun that I was waving around. I was terrified, my heart was racing, and my eyes were as big as saucers. I cautiously took cover behind lampshades and decorative pillows as I moved from room to room. I checked the windows; all were locked and none were broken. I flung open closet doors and thrust the barrel of the gun inside; my jackets put their hands up and surrendered. I jiggled the doorknobs on all my outside doors; they were locked as expected. I even checked the kitty door in case a wandering skunk had found its way inside; still nothing ? its lock was secure. I finally allowed myself to breathe, and tried to tuck my heart back into its proper position in my chest. The wife, sensing that all enemies had fled for their lives from her brave husband, walked into the kitchen with tears on the verge of escaping.
I love my sleep more than a lot of people, and was pretty grumpy about the whole affair. A smart man would have bitten his tongue, but that big chunk of my brain that regulates stupidity was determined to not let such a ripe opportunity pass. Right before I handed my balls back to the wife, I used them one last time to make a snarky remark about how all the women of the house needed to relax so I could get some well-earned sleep. As soon as it escaped my lips, icy coldness filled the room. Sex probably won't be an option for a while now.
Later as I lay wide awake in bed and prayed for the adrenaline to die down, I could only wonder how I had emerged from this situation as the bad guy.
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