Just Melanie

Yesterday I was just sitting at my desk, peering into the computer screen, deep in thought as I wrote a story. Writing, writing, writing . . . thinking, thinking, thinking. And then suddenly . . . boom! My chair shakes, something slams into its back.
My heart stops, electrical shocks run through my fingers and a screeching sound comes out. I jump up, crack my knee on the underside of my desk. I spin around to see a friend of my co-worker, Eric Eckert, standing there laughing. Yes, Gerry Ray (who by the way, doesn’t even work here and is the star of “Cloverpeep,” which is an independent film created by Eckert), even knows that I am one of the jumpiest people in the world. So he couldn’t resist stopping on his way out, when he saw I hadn’t noticed his existence, to quickly slam his knee in the back of my chair because he knew it would drop me to the floor.
Oh, the laughter. Oh, the excitement, of scaring me to the point I almost wet my pants and my heart nearly stopped.
“You can’t do that, I could have a heart attack and die!” I exclaimed, but it only rendered more laughter.
Oh, you laugh now — but you’ll all be sorry when you kill me.
My jumpiness has provided a jamboree of entertainment for all who encounter me, for years. My husband even created a ritual that every time he’s in the driver’s seat of a vehicle, and I’m walking in front of it, he’ll honk. I even know it’s coming — after nearly 18 years of marriage and years of dating before that. I expect it. But that doesn’t help — the anticipation, I think, actually makes it worse. I always end up hanging onto the grill, again with these strange electrical charges running through my fingers, this “glug glug” feeling in my juggler vein as the blood tries to keep moving and my heart begging to restart. I then see him laughing through the windshield, because he was cunning enough to startle me for the thousandth time.
And then there’s Kim Blundell, who one day saw me jotting notes while sitting in my vehicle. Of course, she couldn’t resist but to sneak up to the window and scream bloody murder through the cracked window. I don’t think she believed me, when I said I needed some medical attention.
They all do it — the people who know me. Some don’t even intend to . . . there’s days when Kerri Pankratz simply walks around the cloth cubicle to ask me something face to face. Because I’m “in the zone,” her simple question of “What do you have for tomorrow?” will result in me nearly rolling my office chair. “Good Lord,” Kerri says, “what is wrong with you that you’re so jumpy?”
Why am I so jumpy? Seriously? Are you KIDDING me?
If they know me, they know why I’m so jumpy. Let me list the reasons:
• First of all, snakes just fell on my head last week, for no apparent reason.
• I grew up in a place where you had to constantly be scared that a mouse would run up your pant leg, if you put the hip-wader boots on in the milk barn.
• I’ve been technically deaf for more than a week now from a chronic sinus situation that has rendered my left ear useless until I take the time to have it looked at (so I can’t hear them coming).
• I once nearly shocked myself to death when my pepper-spray keychain was accidentally activated in my purse and I literally sprayed myself with the protective mechanism. That’s a shock that stays with you for awhile — especially when you really can’t see or breathe and you’re not sure what’s happening, or why.
• I once ran into an electric fence, in a dark pasture, as I was running through the weeds. It even made my 1980s bracelets light up. I won’t get into why I was running through a dark pasture — that’s water under the bridge that doesn’t need to be discussed.
• I’m a nervous person by nature — check out my fingernails, or actually the lack thereof. After decades of ripping them off, the only thing left to paint with nail polish, at this point, is my rounded, fleshy stubs that Ms. Pankratz called “gross” about a half-hour ago.
• I once put a sweater on that had a bat hanging on the front. Before I knew what it was, I was eye-to-eye with the disgusting creature until it waved its wing at me and my heart stopped once again.
• There was a day many years ago, when I was still driving my beloved (but diseased) Buick Reatta. I loved the car, but it hated me, and decided to show its distaste for our relationship by completely cutting all braking function. I pushed down — no brakes, whatsoever, all of a sudden. All at the corner of Sixth and Lincoln, over the noon hour, in the days before the bypass rerouted the semis.
• I grew up in a trailer house without a basement — so any time it stormed, whether it was in the middle of the night or not (and it usually was), I remember being ripped out of bed, suddenly forced to be awake, running through the wind and hail and rain and whatever to the horrifying cave in the yard. And sometimes, if we were lucky, Grandma Onie and Grandpa Andy would join us, so they could fight with each other about whatever they could think of while Andy sat holding an axe at the entrance to the creepy black hole. That’s a great way to be startled awake.
• And, I am the oldest of seven children who begged for silence, peace and quiet. The worst thing to ever hear was the silence be broken — hence, the reason I must always slip “into the zone.”
For whatever the reason, the people who know me have to realize that yes, while it is entertaining to startle me, sneak up on me, there is a reason that I say, “You nearly scared me to death.”
Don’t come at me from behind, sneak up on me, plot to scare me — you’ll be sorry when you kill me.