Sometimes the anxiety of expecting a baby can play out in weird ways in your dreams, like when Steve Winwood battled the Devil for me. But sometimes those anxieties don’t come out in your dreams. They come out in real life.
It was about 6am on a Monday morning. I was in the shower when I felt something strange on my leg. A little puzzled, I looked down and saw a small circle Band-Aid and thought, “Huh, that’s weird, I didn’t cut myself or anything.”
So I pulled it off and that’s when I saw there was a small spot of blood on the Band-Aid! “Uh oh, this isn’t good,” I thought, and started to get really worried.
Before I go any further you should know that I’m interested in stories of the strange. Government conspiracies, ghosts, paranormal activities, crop circles, big foot, chupacabra, mothman, and alien abductions. You know, that kind of stuff. When I was working I’d usually spend the majority of my lunch hour reading about all of these things. Also, during this whole period of Ellie’s pregnancy, I was going to bed pretty late working on the house preparing Ellie’s nursery. So combine reading about aliens and pregnancy on my lunch hour with going to bed late and having pre-baby anxiety and you’ll understand my current mental state at the time (Or maybe not. Maybe I am “that guy” and just a total weirdo).
Anyway, there was a small dot of blood on the Band-Aid. What!? There was no mark on my leg though! “Oh my gosh. I’ve been abducted,” was the first thing I thought.
Yes, I actually had this exact thought cross my mind at 6am on a Monday morning in the shower. I was like Fox Mulder from the X-Files and immediately discounted any logical explanation and went straight for the most absurd one. Out of all of the possibilities available to rationalize a circle band-aid with blood on my leg, the first thing that crossed my mind was alien abduction. I started to quietly freak out in my mind. I was that guy. That guy that thinks he’s been abducted.
In that current state of panic trying to find another explanation for this scenario, reality started to sink in. “If I were abducted, would they really use a band-aid?” I thought.
(This was my reality. Not that aliens wouldn’t abduct me, but that they wouldn’t use Band-Aids).
Probably not. It seemed unlikely that the mothership was stocked full of circle Band-Aids. So if aliens didn’t do this to me, then who did? Did Aya do this to me in my sleep? Was she taking blood samples in the middle of the night? Was I injected with a virus by the government? Is this how they were spreading the swine-flu? Mt mind was racing with the possibilities. Oh man…Â this was NOT good.
I finished my shower in a silent panicked daze. I couldn’t think of a rational explanation of why a bloody band-aid was on my leg. All signs pointed to something paranormal and possibly tragic.
But I finally collected myself enough to confront Aya about my “situation.” I walked into the bedroom where she was getting ready for work and spoke up with a worried tone of voice, “I found this band-aid on my leg and…”
And before I could explain my concerns of the abduction or government conspiracy she said, without missing a beat, “Yeah, that was on my foot. It must have fallen off during the night. What? Did you think you were abducted or something?”
“Umm… NO!…” I said.
She must know me too well. She didn’t even look up when she said that. She was able to reassure my concern while rolling her eyes and making fun of me at the same time. But whatever. Who cares if I had someone else’s Band-Aid on my leg? At least I wasn’t abducted!
I’d like to say I’ve learned my lesson about reading or watching too much “strange” things during this pregnancy, but I can’t. Netflix just released all nine seasons of the X-Files and I’ve started watching them in order. I’m about halfway through and it definitely hasn’t helped my weird dreams, but more on that again later…
