The Boogie Man

I’m tired. Not just a little tired, but really tired. I know this is not unique. Pretty much everyone I know is some degree of tired these days; it seems like most of us are burning the candle at both ends – juggling too many things and just trying to retain sanity and stay awake until bed time. Normally the fatigue level of a typically busy life is manageable, but sometimes it crosses over into something else. After a month of conferences, and late work nights, and school starting, and soccer practices, and single parenting, and just WAY too little sleep, I’m there. I’m bone-weary, muddle-brained, zombie-eyed tired.

There is always one dead-give-away sign that I’ve crossed over into this overly-tired territory – well, one sign besides the weary bones, non-functioning brain, and zombie eyes. When I’m really, ridiculously tired, I become oddly paranoid. I start attributing weird explanations to things I actually see and hear, as well as to things I only think I see and hear. In my mind there is some sort of Boogie Man lurking in every situation – murderous Boogie Men, thieving Boogie Men, dangerous wild animal Boogie Men!

Once, I became convinced that a pack of wild, rabid coyotes had gotten into our basement, upending boxes and furniture. As it turned out, the hot water heater had broken and flooded the basement. The boxes weren’t so much upended as they were floating. In this case, I would have preferred the wild, blood-thirsty animals.

Then there was the time that, while rocking Chester to sleep, I kept hearing a ringing phone. It rang and rang and then stopped, and then rang and rang and then stopped. No one ever answered. After putting Chester to bed, I spent a good half-hour tip-toeing around the house, stopping in various spots, listening intently. I was absolutely certain the ringing was coming from our basement. Clearly a serial killer that would come to be known far and wide as The Cell Phone Psycho was in my house, waiting to strike. This was the only logical explanation. Surprisingly, that was not the case. It was my musician neighbor, having returned home from a holiday gig dressed as an elf, attempting to find her lost cell phone. I got roped into helping her look for it and found it, in the snow, under the front driver’s side tire of her car. Now honestly, isn’t the Cell Phone Psyhco explanation more plausible than an elf’s lost phone?

This morning, as I was washing my breakfast dishes, I saw, in my peripheral vision, a large, dark figure move across the window in the back door. I froze and slowly turned my head to look more closely. Whatever it was had moved out of sight. It could have been a bird or maybe a cat walking on the deck railing, but those are the likely explanations, and when I’m tired, my mind does not default to likely explanations. What is far more plausible to my exhausted brain is that a crazed, violent criminal is in my backyard. I mean, it’s a lovely, sunny Friday morning. I’ve just returned from yoga, and I’m washing a glass. It only makes sense that it’s a psycho murderer, right? Right. So I end up creeping around my house, peeking out windows, around edges of blinds, trying to be as quiet as I can, because if I’m super-quiet then maybe the crazy man in my backyard won’t break in and kill me.

Finally I decided I was being ridiculous and that it really WAS probably a bird or a cat. I must have had a moment of real, clear, non-ridiculous thinking because I even got in the shower, and everybody knows you wouldn’t DARE get in the shower with a crazed killer roaming around, casting shadows in your backyard. So I took my shower and everything was fine – no Norman Bates, no creepy Bernard Herrmann score. I was even to the point of chuckling at myself, until I turned off the water, pulled back the shower curtain, and reached for my towel. There it was… writing in the steam on the bathroom mirror! I froze mid-reach, my heart pounded, my mind raced, I squinted at the writing. What did it say?! “Redrum?!” Oh my God, did it say “Redrum?!” I couldn’t quite make it out. The only explanation was that the post-breakfast shadow actually was a murderer who snuck across my deck, waited for me to get in the shower, broke into the house and then quietly crept into the bathroom to write a creepy message in the steam on the bathroom mirror. And now, at any moment he would spring out and get me. Never mind that I have an 8 year old son who consistently insists on putting his sticky little hands on and in everything. In fact, just last night I caught him swirling his finger around in a side of ketchup in a manner I reserve only for attempting to retrieve chunks of delicious pineapple from Mai Tais in Hawaii. It couldn’t have possibly been him writing on the mirror! No way. That’s simply crazy, outlandish thinking.

My all time favorite was actually not me, but my very tired husband, being paranoid. I like to call it the Great Toilet Paper Heist and I’ll probably get into trouble for writing about it because, to this day, my very tired husband does not find the story nearly as amusing as I do. The Great Toilet Paper Heist occurred when Chester was toddler-aged. He still wasn’t sleeping through the night or any later than about 5:00 a.m. and we were deliriously tired. It was a Saturday or Sunday afternoon and we had returned from Target with a bunch of typical Target stuff – paper towels, toilet paper, cleaning products, diapers, etc. and were in the process of putting it all away. I was bustling around and Matt stopped me to ask where I’d put the toilet paper he had left at the foot of the stairs. I told him I hadn’t done anything with the toilet paper and attempted to continue along my way. He asked me if I was sure. I assured him I was.

“You probably already took it upstairs,” I said.

“No, I didn’t!” he whispered, his eyes darting back and forth.

I tried to speak in a normal voice, but was immediately shushed.

“Why are we whispering?” I asked.

“Because someone is in the house,” he hissed. “Someone has got to be in the house, I DID NOT move the toilet paper from the stairs!”

“So you think someone broke into the house and stole the toilet paper?” I attempted to clarify . . .  “While we were here?”

“YES!!! Or moved it!”
“Moved it?” I quietly and incredulously inquired.

Turns out, there was no emboldened toilet paper thief, which is really kind of disappointing when you think about it, because that’s some good stuff. The kind of stuff you can’t possibly make up; unless of course you’re really, really, ridiculously tired.    

The good news is, I managed to escape and get to work this morning, but I’m pretty sure the killer is still hiding in my house, lurking, waiting to write on the mirror again, to leave a closet door open, to stop the washing machine after I’ve started it, or to hide something important. That’s what Boogie Men do.