So it’s 9:30 Saturday morning; Aaron and I are sleeping soundly in our beds. In my dream, someone is hammering on something—it’s an annoying dream, mostly because it won’t stop. Then I wake up and realize that it’s not a dream; someone is hammering something—our door, actually. Well, knocking, I guess, to put it more realistically. That makes it even more annoying, because I can’t roll over and make it go away. Anyway, Aaron drags himself out of bed, stumbles out to the front door and opens it. There stands a happy meal, short two french fries.

Well, actually it’s a guy that we had never seen before looking for someone named “Melissa" who had lost her checkbook outside one of the apartment buildings nearby.

“D-d-d-do you kn-know M-m-m-m-Melissa?" he asked Aaron.

“No, sorry, I don’t.”

“Sh-sh-she doesn’t live here, does she?”

“No, no one named Melissa lives here.”

“M-m-m-m-me looking for two-two-zero-two, and th-th-those are the numbers on your-your building.”

“Well, actually, our number is two-two-two-two. And you’re actually looking for one of the three-story apartment buildings; see, this apartment number is a third floor one. Our building only has two stories.”

“C-c-c-could you show m-m-m-me where this is?”

My wonderful husband—he’s so gracious to weird people, even at 9:30 on a Saturday morning. He paused for a moment; I could tell he didn’t want to go wandering all over the neighborhood looking for this irresponsible Melissa who lost her checkbook, but it didn’t appear the guy would go away without him, so finally he said, “Well, I’ll need to get dressed. Give me a few minutes, okay?”

“Okay. M-m-m-me wait—me wait out h-h-h-here?”

“Yes, I’ll be out in a minute.”

I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one bit; for all I knew the guy was going to get my husband out of sight, drag him behind a building, and mug him (I have a firm belief in the basic goodness of human nature, don’t I?) Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do. The guy was outside our door, waiting for my husband to get dressed, and, as I mentioned earlier, he wasn’t about to go away on his own.

“Can’t we just print off internet directions for the guy?" I asked Aaron, merciful woman that I am. He was brushing his teeth and couldn’t answer, so I took it upon myself to look up the address online. It was about a hundred yards from our building—just around the corner. A perfect corner, I might add, for going around if you were planning on dragging someone behind a building and mugging them. I showed Aaron where the building was.

“Okay, thanks." he said, “I guess I’ll head out." He grabbed his keys, and, as an afterthought, his very nasty looking serrated knife.

“If you’re not back in fifteen minutes, I’m—I’m calling the police," I warned him.

“I’ll be fine—if he’s got anything in mind, I can outrun him.”

“You want me to come along?" I asked this as if I could do something to help if the guy had foul play in mind—me, eight months pregnant, who can’t even walk without waddling. But at least I’d know if something happened, instead of wondering why my husband was taking so long to walk a hundred yards.

“No—you couldn’t outrun him." (Thank you, dear. I’ll hold that against you some day.)

So off he trots with this weird guy to reunite Melissa with her wandering checkbook. I really couldn’t help myself, you know, sneaking out of the house behind them, making sure that everything was on the up and up. I followed them around the corner and watched as they went into the building that Melissa lived in. I stood at the corner for about ten minutes, concocting all kinds of stories about people dragging my husband into an apartment and committing criminal acts against him, all of which ended in widowhood for me. I was just getting to the climax of my wildest concoction yet when I saw the two of them walk back out the front door. I rushed back to the house and waited for Aaron to come back. As it turns out, the guy only wanted to return some poor girl’s checkbook. Now what do you think of that!?