The Attic Emergency

Today, I decided to make it a productive day and knock out a whole bunch of things on my to-do list.  One of the things that I needed to do was to rehang the mirrors up in the tree outside, so that the stupid cardinal (who I have nicknamed Richelieu after the Cardinal in The Three Musketeers) will stop banging into our breakfast room windows.  So, imagine me completely up in a tree, tying off a mirror, when I hear screaming from inside our house.  I perked my ears up to hear what was going on, but kept tying off the mirror.  That's when I heard my wife screaming for Troy "to go get dada right away because she needed help.  It was an emergency."

My wife's project for the day was to reorganize the attic, and she had already gotten injured several times in the process.  So, I imagined the worst.  I could hear Troy running around the house screaming for me to "Help!  Help!  Dada, please help!"  He had no idea that I was outside, and he was terrified that he couldn't find me.  I was attempting to climb down out of the tree in the backyard as fast as I could, but I lost my footing and ended up falling most of the way instead.  I cut my wrist open on a branch, but I ignored the blood and went racing around the house to see what was going on.

Troy met me at the door, tears streaming down his face, and said, "Where have you been, dada?!  I need help!  Mama is dying!"  I patted him on the head and told him that I'd check it out, then raced upstairs to see what was going on.  I found my wife in the attic with a heavy bin perched precariously on a shelf above her head.  There was something on top of the box that had gotten stuck on the ceiling, so she couldn't get the bin either up or down.  There was no blood, no death, no injury, no emergency.  I helped unravel the situation and then went back downstairs to comfort Troy, who was still beside himself in tears.  I assured him that his mother was not dying and that she just needed help with a bin, but he didn't calm down until I told him to go upstairs and see for himself.

What a load of unnecessary drama!  And in the end, the only one that ended up getting truly injured was me.  Figures.