Do you know this man?

First, some backstory. A few years ago, I visited the Louisville Slugger baseball bat factory in Kentucky. They take you on a little tour and give you a little mini bat afterwards.

My mini bat sits at the top of the stairs, behind the recycling. In all the carpet-laying and de-cluttering, Tim couldn’t understand why the mini bat endured. “Can’t we get rid of it?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “It’s here to be handy; in case someone breaks in, I can bop them one.”

Second bit of backstory: I am completely erratic in my sleep cycle. Most of it is me (reading a great book till all hours), but some of it is circumstance (3 a.m. wrong number). A lot of it is just the toggle switch that doesn’t toggle to “sleep” in my brain.

Friday morning was the 3 a.m. wrong number. Friday night was the really great book and the noise outside that involved one young woman with a very abrasive laugh. So Saturday morning, I woke up and told Tim I’d had a rough night, barely got any sleep at all.

“I beg to differ,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“There was the 4 a.m. vandalism that I had to chase down with my axe handle.”

This is one of those sentences that gives you pause. You suddenly look at your husband very differently. Suddenly he’s a guy with a secret life right under your nose. Either that, or he’s lost his mind.

“I woke up to the sound of crashing as they bashed the mailbox, but by the time I got into my caftan and grabbed the axe handle, they had already walked down the street. The mailboxes and some cars have been spray-painted.”

If you’re like me, you’re still stuck on “axe handle.” The rest is barely processing … and it’s not just because you’re tired.

“You have an axe handle?”

“Yes, I keep it in the closet. It’s better than your little weanie baseball bat.”

“Did you call the police?” “No.”

Interjection by friend: “He’s lucky. If anyone had called the police, they’d go after the crazy guy in the caftan with the axe handle.”

Interjection by wife: “Yes, but if he’d called the police, and the culprits were just walking, they could have been apprehended.”

Husband: “What I should have done is gotten in my car with the bear spray.”

Lesson for my Third Third on the eve of our 27th wedding anniversary: Don’t ever think he’s run out of surprises.