You know how there are some people who just love being scared? People who actually like going to scary movies and enjoy the rush of near death experiences (motorcyclists, mainly). Well I’ve heard there are people like that, anyway. I’m not one of them.
One of Aaron’s friends from Calgary was in town for the weekend and staying at our place. He arrived late Thursday night after I went to bed, and was going to be sleeping on our couch in the living room. Now, any of you who have ever been on a road trip with me know that I have maybe the smallest bladder in the history of time. Invariably I will have to get up to go to the washroom at least once during the night. This is a major problem in my house as our bedrooms are about as far from the bathroom as you could possibly get. Total opposite ends of the suite. Trying to find your way there in the dark from my room is like running an obstacle course blindfolded. On this particular evening, with someone sleeping on the couch I couldn’t even use the flick-the-light-on-and-squint-your-way-across-the-room tactic. So I asked Aaron to warn his friend that I would probably be getting up in the middle of the night and to please make sure to leave a clear path to the bathroom. Aaron did not remember to do this.
Naturally, at about 2:30 in the morning I woke up and had to go. So I slowly, quietly made my way out of my room towards the bathroom. I got about halfway through the living room before I stubbed my toe on the coffee table. The sound of my toe crunching against wood woke Aaron’s friend up and scared the bejeebus out of him. We are talking jumping to his feet, blankets flying everywhere “WHAT! HOLY CRAP! WHERE AM I? WHAT! WHAT’S HAPPENING! HOLY CRAP!” kind of scared. I froze, debating whether or not I could legitimately run for it with my obviously broken and throbbing toe (not). Thankfully, our houseguest realized fairly quickly once he had woken up where he was and that I was not, in fact trying to kill him or anything.
It was the scariest thing that’s happened to me for quite awhile, and once I was finally back in bed it probably took about an hour for my heart rate to go back down to normal. The moral of the story is that I hate being scared and for the rest of the weekend I made sure to cut myself off from any and all liquids at like 9pm. Also, the next time I look for a place to live, I am going to make sure that the bathroom is as close to my bedroom as possible.