Fight or Flight

I’m the first to get up every morning.  The husband used to come down while I was still in the shower and start his bathroom routine. A routine that begins with a lengthy stay on the toilet.  I have to tell you, that was a horrible way to start my day – horrible! Nobody deserves to be subjected to the smells I had to endure. Nobody.  I feel like I should get some kind of award for remaining conscious. And not throwing up. Very often.

Now he says in bed and I wake him up when I’m done.  I don’t know if this was a deliberate decision on his part – I didn’t complain but I’m sure my feelings were clear by my constant shouts of “SPRAY!” – or if it’s just general sleepiness on his part. Either way, this has improved my life exponentially. 

So I wake up, leave my sleeping husband and stumble across our bedroom and make my way downstairs.  As I round the corner to go down the hall to the bathroom a man suddenly steps out of the darkness and says something.  I’ve never encountered a home invader before but I’ve watched enough Criminal Minds to know that it could happen.

I’ve always pictured myself as a fighter. Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand that I’m at a physical disadvantage but in my mind, I was going to fight as hard as I could for as long as I could. And somehow that translated into me having the advantage. So I’ve always been confident that if something happened, I could instinctively take the other person down.

But I’m so struck with terror that attacking this guy doesn’t even register with me. Instead, my hands fly up to protect my face and I jump about three feet. But not three feet up. I’m pretty sure my feet didn’t make it more than two inches off the ground. No, I jumped backwards. And I screamed. But I didn’t scream for help or shout out my husband’s name – nope. I screamed, in my most frightened voice, “What?”

And as soon as I get that out of my mouth I hear laughing. And my husband’s voice asking “Why would you yell ‘What’? You think somebody’s in the house and you yell ‘What’?”

I responded by smacking him really hard.

So now we know when the adrenaline rushes though I’ll be in total flight mode. No ninja moves for this chick. Now I need to work to make sure my flight is a little more than a baby jump backwards because if I really was being attacked, that totally wouldn't have saved me...