It’s a Curse

You think it’s fun having an over-active imagination? I was driving in fear half the way back to New York on Sunday, wondering what had happened to my wife. I had talked to her on Friday night, when she told me she had to break into our house (I won’t tell you how). So, I was already worrying about what might happen while she was asleep. But then I left her with my car, which last week was making unsettling noises when I was backing up and breaking, which is why I took her car for the 800-mile trip. Then she tells me there are teens smoking and building fire pits in the woods behind our house. So, when I get to “North of Gettysburg” Pennsylvania and my debit card is declined at the gas pump, and I call Julie on the Phone Card and she’s not at home, I start to get a little worried.

At first I was worried about the house. I know that Julie fixed what she needed to on Saturday, but I also now knew what was possible. And what if other people did, too? Then I was worried about the car. I knew she and the boy were going to the Zoo that morning. Maybe I left them in a death trap waiting to happen and my car was what did it to them.

That took about 90 minutes. Then I pulled off again to call and see if she was home yet. No answer. Now I was really worried. New possibilities began to form in my head. Maybe the government had her. I had spent that hour lost in and around Washington. Were there cameras capturing and comparing license plates in that area? Was it suspicious that this car was driving around, past the Washington Monument, with no seeming purpose? Had they frozen my accounts? Had they tracked the address through a national DMV registry and were holding her right now, listening to the answering machine as I left the message, lying in wait for me to come home so they could nab me and question me?

I drove the rest of the way without stopping. I made it home a little after 7pm. Everyone (except for me) was fine. They had been napping, or playing outside. The debit glitch was at the gas station, not at the bank. I had spent all that time in nervous worry, all for naught…

Or was it?