Mama's Got A Screaming Doormat--redux, but one of my fave memories

I had a screaming doormat once, which was a wonderful invention. To explain the doormat, it must be understood that the scream which emitted from it was quite terrifying. Try screaming at the top of your lungs as if you're watching a B or even C grade horror flick, and you'll begin to sense the unease that the doormat created. AAHHHHHHHHHHHHH! it went, as if someone was being thrown from the top of a mountain AND seeing ghosts on the way down. Even worse was that my husband, Tim secreted the microphone behind the pumpkin, and then carefully laid a straw mat over the doormat to thoroughly disguise our mischievous mat. The postwoman was an unhappy victim. Even I fell prey to the mat. The first two days I owned the thing, I would go trotting out the front door, step on it, and a shattering scream would erupt. Curse words would yelp violently from my mouth as my heart beat a crazed tattoo.

Worse, it screamed in the night. The first night, I was petrified. I poked Tim, who ignored me, as he is the victim of many pokes, and as there are varying types of pokes, he's gotten to be a good screener of which pokes he should ignore and which require attention. But I said, "Tim! The doormat just screamed!"

He said, "It did not. Go back to sleep."

I lay in the darkness listening, then crept to the door to peer out. Nothing.

The next night we were asleep, and the doormat gave its high-pitched death-cry. "Tim!" I said, with an urgent poking. "The doormat just screamed!"

"It couldn't have," he said. "You're hearing things."

Now, Tim should know better than to doubt me on such things. Many years ago, when we lived on the other side of town, I heard a horrible noise in the night. "Tim!" I said, gasping for breath, "There's someone outside!"

"You heard something," he said, "Maybe dogs getting into the trashcan outside."

He delivers this wisdom while our hound, Shep, is at the foot of our bed, looking into the darkness, growling the guttural growl of a dog who is about to send someone to his maker.

I know two things: One, I did NOT hear dogs getting into trashcans, because a peep out my back window shows that all is well, and two, Tim is not going to investigate. But Shep is still growling low and concentrated, so I creep to the front door to peer cautiously into the darkness. I see a man standing over something long on the ground. My eyes adjust, and I realize it's a policeman. And he's writing something down.

Now I have the way to get Tim's attention. I go back into the bedroom. "Honey," I say firmly, "there is an officer outside, and something is in our front yard, approximately the length of a dead body, and the officer is writing a citation. You'll probably get to PAY for whatever it is that's lying in your front yard, since it is YOUR front yard."

Tim shoots from the bed and goes galloping to the front door. He confirms that, indeed, an officer is outside, and he is writing a ticket, report, or citation. Changing, he hurries out front to investigate.

I go back to bed. It is the day before Christmas Eve, after all, and I am pregnant with Dean. I need my sleep.

It turns out that the dead body is actually a bathtub which was being stolen from an abandoned home in our neighborhood but fell from the back of the truck, leaving the bathtub in great shatters in front of my house. What a nice Christmas lawn ornament, you say, and I say that's a story for another day.

So Tim knows not to ignore me when I say I hear something, and he finally goes to check on the mat, but there is nothing outside. What I discovered later, and quite by accident, is that the next-door-neighbors' cat had become enamored of my straw mat and wanted to sleep on it at night because he could sink his claws into it and have a nice scratch. He kept returning every night because he wanted to, it was his bed, and the hidden screaming doormat underneath was an inconvenience, I suppose, that he thought would one day go away.

The neighbors who brought their lawn chairs every night to sit on my lawn to watch the children play also became immune to the doormat's screams of agony.

The kids would run inside for a popsicle. AHHHHHHHHHHHH! screamed the mat.

The kids would run inside to throw away the popsicle stick. AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

The kids would run back outside. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

We had an older friend who loved to visit, but the doormat was just too much for him. We took pity on him and turned off the mat when he was visiting, and, frankly, he made us nervous with his constant jumping out of his chair every time a bloodcurdling howl erupted.

But I became quite attached to the mat, and every night when I heard the mat scream, I would lie in the dark and smile, knowing that all was well. It was the best security system I ever had.