Things that Go Bump in the Night Fortunately Don’t Always Lead to Nancy Grace

It sounded like a wailing cat, except we don’t have a cat.

“Did you hear that?” I said, waking up my husband.

“Hear what?” he mumbled.

“That noise. I think it was an animal.”

“It’s probably just Buster (our neighbor’s dog),” he said.

“But I think it came from somewhere in the house!”

We listened, but heard nothing. In minutes, my husband fell back asleep.

I listened to the silence for about another half hour, didn’t hear anything else, then fell back asleep too.

A while later, I heard it again. This time, I heard someone speaking.

“Did you hear that???”

“Yeah,” hubby said, sitting up.

As we both held our breath, listening for what was surely to be the sound of burglars ransacking our house, my heart raced and I was certain we were going to be the next family featured on “Dateline NBC” or “Nancy Grace.” I could see it now: “Suburban family attacked in the middle of the night by man who sounded like cat!” My inner Nancy Grace began berating me, “Why didn’t you get up the first time you heard him? You mean to tell me you just turned over and went back to sleeeeeeep? You hear something that sounds like a wailing cat in the middle of the night and it doesn’t occur to you to even check it out???”

Then we heard him again. This time his words were loud and clear:

“Oh boy! Hee-hee-hee! This is fun!!!”

Wait a minute. I knew that voice: It was my daughter’s talking Ernie doll.

Hey, Ernie! Newsflash! At three in the morning, this is not ‘fun’!!!

“Where is he?” hubby asked, on a groggy mission to silence the Muppet once and for all.

“I don’t know. Somewhere in her bedroom?”

My husband got up and did a little ransacking himself, but Ernie couldn’t be found. He didn’t make another peep, either. My husband returned.

“Can’t find him. Oh well, at least now we know what it is.”

The Culprit

He fell back asleep, but I couldn’t. I was all worked up and began to think: a little noise and I immediately think the worst. Once last year, the wind blew open and slammed shut our storm door and I raced out into the living room with a large rock in my hand ready to throw it at what was sure to be the boogey man.

When, really: how often do these things happen? The stories that make the news programs? Not very often. Crime happens in our city every day, but not all of them are of Nancy Grace-proportions. However, we tend to worry and expect the worst. Especially when it comes to situations involving our kids. We no longer immediately trust them in the care of teachers, pastors, babysitters or coaches. I’m not saying we should automatically trust someone, but I think my parents were more willing to do just that when I was a kid. Why aren’t I? Actually, when it comes to my daughter, I trust very few people, but maybe that’s not healthy or right?

There’s an author who’s trying to convince us not to believe the media hype and instead trust our instincts. Her name is Lenore Skenazy and her book is called Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry. You can also check out her blog/web site here.  Lenore’s belief is that once a child is old enough, she should be allowed to do things such as walk to school or ride a bike without having a ’security detail’ present with her at all times. The world is no less safe than when we were kids, but if you listen to the news, you just might think that it is. While crimes such as kidnappings do unfortunately happen, the odds of them occuring to our children are very slim. We should be cautious parents who try our absolute best to keep our kids safe, but we should not be so fearful that we keep them constantly under lock and key.

My daughter found Ernie the next morning. He was wedged in between the toy box and the wall, which is probably why he keep ’sounding off’ intermittently. I told my daughter how he woke me up and I couldn’t sleep afterward. She handed him to me.

“Here, Mama,” she said. “He won’t scare you anymore.”