Mistaken Identies

It is rare when my wife gets into bed before me, and I think that is for good reason.

Before walking across the living room, before heading down the stairs, before pulling back the homemade quilt, the feather bed, and the 600 count threaded sheets, my wife takes off her glasses, tucking them safely into the bathroom cabinet. The terrain she must navigate with blurry vision is not dangerous. She has done it many times and knows her way around.

But, as she laid in bed last night, waiting for me to get my affairs in order, she started looking around. She panickly announced, "Is that a spider?" The covers are creeping closer to her chin as the realization that a spider might be sharing her sleeping space sinks in. She is resisting the temptation to cover her head for fear she will lose track of the spider.

Good lord, here we go.

Our bedroom isn't a broom closet. There are all kinds of places a spider can find its way into. Her announcement was so vague I had to ask, "Where?"

"Over there." Her hand comes out of the covers to point slowly and purposefully, like she's the Grim Reaper of insects. "On the wall," she stops to count. "Five bricks down, by the dresser."

I'm already looking at the "spider" before she tells me where it is. I'm standing further away than she is from the "spider" and already know she's mistaken.

"No, it's a spot on the wall."

She was skeptical. I think she thought I was lying so I could just get into bed already.

I sighed knowing that although I let her know it was not, in fact, a spider, the issue was still unresolved. My shoulders sank as I wearily asked, "Do you want me to go over and touch it?"

She nodded her head up and down like an excitedly nervous child.

I walked around our bed, stradled a dog bed, and brought my finger to the spot of mortar she had mistaken for a blood-sucking, human-eating spider.

"Do you feel better now?"

She nodded and said, "When you went to touch it I thought it was going to jump on you and attack your face!"

Yeah, because aside from binding bricks together, mortar is known for that very thing.