A spooky, scary and spine-chillingly appropriate holiday story, also see: hilarious cautionary tale

Awhile back, my good friend Alex was telling a group of us a story about her married life that I have never quite been able to shake from my mind. To this day, I still laugh out loud when I envision the real-life scene. She was one of my roommates in our off-campus house during the college years and I am well-versed in her romantic history. In those days, there was more than one random Tuesday afternoon when I'd walk into the house and be greeted with Madonna's Justify My Love pounding through the speakers and the view of a veritable Splendor on the Carpet because Alex and her college boyfriend didn't have class that day. Never mind that she had her own bedroom with her own door, or that she knew when her roommates would get home for the day. That kind of stuff never seemed to bother her at all.

I have so many great and wholly-inappropriate-for-this-blog stories about living with her that I could fill a book, but I'll wait for my publishing deal to come through. I don't give it all away for free, you know! Back to the story that I am going to share with you...

Alex and her husband were looking to spice things up in the bedroom with a little bit of role playing. Her husband worked second shift and she suggested that one night after she's asleep he should come into the bedroom with a mask on--like an intruder--and, you know, seduce her. He shouldn't tell her in advance though, because that would ruin the surprise. So far, so good, right?

She assumed that when the night came, he would wear something like this:


A textbook ski mask. They had an entire front closet full of them.


Or this:


The bank robber look. Simple. Classic. Never goes out of style.


Or, if he was feeling REALLY creative maybe he'd show up in something like this:


She didn't REALLY think he'd go to the trouble of buying a mask with rhinestone detailing, but this was about as much credit as she was giving him for pulling out all the stops. That was the last time she'd ever underestimate his creativity.


Here's the part of the story which emphasizes the great divide between women and men, and how we are not wired the same way AT ALL.

Several weeks had gone by, and she drifted off to sleep one night, with nary a thought of their previous discussion. Her husband came home from work and figured it had been long enough for her to have put the "seduction by masked man" idea out of her mind so he excitedly went into action, going to the garage to pull out what he planned to wear from the very first time she brought it up. He just knew he had the perfect thing! He then skulked into the house, and tip-toed into their darkened bedroom. Just as he hovered over her side of the bed, he flipped on the low-wattage nightstand lamp while shaking her shoulder to wake her.

She groggily opened her eyes, to see this:

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Turns out he had an old Halloween costume in the garage that she didn't know about: Jason, from Friday the 13th


She screamed her head off, jumped up from the bed, and kicked him so hard that he fell to his knees. Her violent reaction shocked him! Her incredibly accurate kick knocked the wind out of him! This was NOT part of the plan! Even though he was reaching for her from the floor, attempting to say, "It's ME! It's okay, it's only ME!" all that was coming out of his mouth was a succession of low and indistinguishable moans of confounded pain. In the meantime, she ran to grab the kitchen phone and locked herself in the bathroom on the lower level of their house, where she immediately called 911.

By the time her husband gathered himself and made it downstairs, the police were already on their way, and boy, did he have some explaining to do.


Do yourself a favor this Halloween--and especially any other day of the year-- resist waking your loved one while wearing a terrifying costume, no matter how perfect you think it is.