The clock read 1:25 a.m. when I woke up to feel heartburn crawling around my chest. Must have been the cider I drank before bedtime or maybe the two or was it three pumpkin peeps I had along with the cider.
I lay there for awhile contemplating if the heartburn was bad enough for me to get up and take something. Lying on my side looking out the window I noticed car lights reflecting off the trees. Who would be on our dead end road at this time of the night?
I hustled out of bed and walked into the north bedroom and just caught the taillights going down the hill away from the house. Good - whoever it was, they were on their way out. But who was it? By now my heartburn was really kicking in so I proceeded to the kitchen for the ever trusty Ranitidine tablets.
Into my mind came the thought that there had been someone at the end of the road in the afternoon and they had turned around and left.
Had that person returned to steal something? My thoughts often go to the dark side after the midnight hour.
To get in a more positive vein I wondered if the Muskegon Chronicle delivery guy was delivering the Sunday paper. Why not go check? If the paper was there, then I’d know there weren’t any people up to no good. Besides I was curious to know how Mona Shores beat Muskegon in Friday night’s football game. I would probably be awake for awhile and that would be good reading.
I shoved my feet into some slip on shoes, grabbed a jacket off the hook to cover my nightgown and unlocked the door. I hesitated before turning on the outside light on the garage, but figured it was better to light my way to the end of the driveway.
The shadows turned my legs into toothpicks which I found amusing. In the next second a panicked feeling came over me as I saw car lights coming toward me where the last car had gone out and disappeared. What the heck? Why were the bad guys returning? I knew how stupid I would look to anyone, let alone someone I didn’t know. I felt like a deer in the headlights until the fight or flight mechanism in my brain kicked in. I chose flight.
The garage door was down so I couldn’t hide there and I had to run fast to make it to the house. If only I hadn’t turned that darned outside light on. At first I was jogging toward the house and then as the lights got closer I started to sprint. For two glorious seconds I felt powerful and strong and fast. It felt like it did when I was a kid running. Then old age hit me in the face. My left knee buckled with a shooting pain in my kneecap. I grabbed the railing to pull myself up to the small deck and gasping I opened the entryway door and snapped off the outside light. When I entered the kitchen I turned that light off as well. I was convinced no one had seen me, but I was in agony.
I hobbled to the front window and watched the car drive slowly toward the middle of our property. I couldn’t see if it was going up my son’s driveway but by this time I had figured out the scenario. If I hadn’t been in so much pain I would have taken a vehicle to the end of the road just to make sure there wasn't a strange car there.
But instead I downed three Ibuprofen and stiff legged it back to my bed. As I tried to get comfortable my husband asked me if I had been awake and if I needed a back rub. I said, “I did something stupid.”
He said, “Oh, O.K.” and went back to sleep.
Around 2:30 a.m. he was awake enough to hear the story and he got the heating pad. It has been heat and ice on my poor knee ever since. Hopefully it will mend.
There was no boogeyman in the night. Our granddaughter Avery had a friend over whose parents were staying down the road at our neighbors. Her friend Ava had felt sick in the middle of the night so my daughter-in-law was taking her back to be with her parents. In essence I was running from my daughter-in-law.
I am now paying the price for going nuts in those dark hours. However I have to confess by saying it’s not the first time I’ve been out of my mind at night and it probably won’t be the last.
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