My wife woke me up in the middle of the night Wednesday to tell me that she heard water running in our house.

I told my wife that she likely heard water running in our house because it was raining outside and had been raining for nearly 24 hours. Then I told my wife I was going back to sleep. My wife thought about what I said for a minute and said: “You’re right. I was overreacting. I do that sometimes. I know now there is nothing to worry about. So, please honey, go back to sleep.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, sometimes I kill myself.

No, what my wife said to me was more along the lines of: “ Get up, you *&^$% of (&%. If we don’t find the problem, we will wake up to a disaster.”

So I got up.

My wife led me downstairs to our living room. She told me to put my ear to a heating vent on the wall. I did. My wife asked me what I heard. I said I didn’t hear anything. My wife told me to listen again. So I did. My wife again asked me what I heard. I told her I heard water.

Wife: See, I told you.

Me: I hear water because it’s raining outside and has been raining for nearly 24 hours.

Wife: No, it’s running through our walls.

Me: You’re crazy.

Wife: You’re dead.

My wife and I have these conversations a lot. The reason my wife and I have these conversations a lot is because my wife is a worrier and I am not. Had I been on the Titanic, I would have been the guy walking around the deck saying, “Don’t worry, it’s just a small leak. Go back to bed. And please, somebody find out where that Celine Dion music is coming from and get rid of it.”

My wife, on the other iceberg, would have been standing in a lifeboat sitting next to Molly Brown yelling back at me standing on the sinking ship, “I told you so, you rotten *&%^.”

What I’m trying to say is, sometimes my wife worries for the right reason. Sometimes my wife is correct when she tells me she thinks something bad is happening in our home.

For example, my wife is constantly monitoring our heating and air-conditioning system. I will come downstairs on a fine Sunday summer morning and find my wife staring intently out of our kitchen window.

“Good morning,” I will say.

“Shhhhh,” my wife will say. “I’m trying to hear if the air conditioning is kicking on.”

I will tell my wife that she’s being silly. I will tell my wife that there is nothing wrong with our air-conditioning system. Many times I’m correct when I say that. Sometimes I’m not.

Sometimes my wife has to call our friend Rocky, the guy who put our heating and air-conditioning system in. Rocky is always very patient and normally can diagnose the problem over the phone and my wife is able to fix the problem. Notice, I said my “wife” is able to fix the problem and not “I” am able to fix the problem. That’s because my wife knows much more about our heating and air-conditioning system than I do, what with her constantly obsessing about it.

The point I’m trying to make is, sometimes it’s a good thing that my wife worries. There, I said it.

Sometimes my wife is right when she worries about some sort of disaster impacting our household. But not all the time. And certainly not last Wednesday night.

After I told my wife that she was crazy (Note to newly married male people: Never tell your wife that she is crazy. Especially if she is, in fact, crazy. It just makes her crazier.) And after my wife told me to drop dead (Note to newly married female people: Go ahead, if you want, and tell your husband to drop dead. Just don’t expect him to do it.) my wife told me to follow her down to our basement.

So I did.

My wife led me to our laundry room and pointed to a series of pipes that run along our basement ceiling.

“Listen,” my wife said.

So I did. My wife asked me what I heard.

“Rainwater,” I said.

My wife told me I was crazy. I told my wife that was quite possible but I also told her I wasn’t the one complaining about hearing running water in the middle of a rainstorm. A comment, by the way, that didn’t go over as well as I thought it might.

My wife pointed to one of the many pipes running along our basement ceiling. She told me she thought the sound of running water was coming from the pipe she was pointing at. I told my wife that I thought the pipe she was pointing at was a gas pipe. And then I told her that I thought the sound of running water was coming from outside where it had been — follow me here — raining for nearly 24 hours.

My wife told me I was wrong. I told my wife she was crazy. She told me to drop dead.

Then I walked back upstairs and went back to bed and dreamed about being stuck on the Titanic while my wife and Molly Brown yelled, “I told you so, you rotten *&%” from a lifeboat.

And that dang Celine Dion song was playing in the background.



Address correspondence to Mike Pound, c/o The Joplin Globe, P.O. Box 7, Joplin, MO 64802, or via e-mail, mpound@joplinglobe.com.