Nov 10, 2014 3 min read

My husband was in the doghouse, and he didn’t know why. When he got up, I was already angry with him. After giving me a certain amount of time to overcome my usual nonmorning-person difficulties, he finally asked me if he did something wrong.

“You didn’t stick up for me,” I replied.

“What are you talking about,” he asked, and he seemed genuinely confused.

“When the truckload of guys called me that name, you laughed with them and didn’t say anything to them about it,” I said, angrily.

“I seriously have no idea what you are talking about,” he said. “You know I would always defend you.”

That last statement gave me pause. I DO know that he would, under normal circumstances, defend my honor if it was called into question. Maybe he hadn’t heard the disparaging remark that was made? I decided to recount the story and try to jar his memory.

But, let me set the stage for you first. For three years, we have had a plethora of strangers traipsing in front of our house at all hours of day and night as part of the traffic staging area for a number of gas wells in our neighborhood.

Occasionally, we had minor issues with some of them, like garbage being left behind, and once or twice, I was unable to get my newspaper delivered because they had blocked my box. I was pretty ticked off when these things happened, and desired to yell at them, but my husband’s cooler head prevailed. He would simply go talk to them calmly and rationally, and usually the problem cleared up.

But then they created a new access point for the traffic to use (Praise God!), and so the traffic and noise subsided in front of my house. That’s why, when this truckload of guys pulled in, I was certain they were lost.

I reminded my husband how I walked calmly down to the truck to tell the men they were in the wrong location. How they could not access their work site from in front of my house. And how they began taunting me and running around in our yard, turning it into a muddy mess.

“And when I asked to speak to whoever was in charge, one of them called me that name,” I finished. “And I don’t know when you got there, but you just laughed with them and sent them on their way.”

“Do you hear yourself,” he asked. “Does this sound like it really happened? Grown men ran in circles in our yard just to tick you off, and I have the ability to appear out of thin air. You dreamed it, Laura.”

Thinking a little harder, parts of the dream began to unravel. Why, if my husband was home, had I ventured down to deal with the guys in the first place? Why would they all have piled out of the truck if this wasn’t their work site? Why did a trespassing citation book appear in my hand once they began taunting me?

I truly had dreamt the whole thing. It hadn’t happened. I had no reason to be a little angry with my husband. I had only reason to feel a whole lot foolish.

Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@verizon.net.