Early morning phone calls on a holiday weekend are always cause for alarm. When I saw that it was my neighbor on the caller TD I feared the worst.

“Cathi,” she said, “I hate to bother you this early, but l wanted to apologize for trashing the side of your house.”

“Wait. Trashing our house?”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“Know what?”
“Go outside and take a look.”

I hopped out of bed and walked out the front door. My neighbor called me to the side yard, where she held up the twisted and tattered canvas of her patio umbrella.

“WOW. Where’s the rest of it?” I asked.

She pointed above my head. I turned to find the umbrella pole lodged in the side of the house with the accuracy of an Olympic javelin. “What on earth?” I asked.

“Remember the big wind gusts last night?”

I recalled the fierce howling of the wind before bed. “Yeah.”

“Well, we ran out to grab the patio furniture before it blew off the deck, but we were too late. The wind picked up the pole, and it shot through the air like a missile.”

“Obviously.” I looked at the pole’s location in relation to the Inside of my bedroom. “Uh, that’s awfully close to our bed.” I cringed. “And it’s my side, too.”

“We thought your bed might be along that wall, but we figurred you were okay because we didn’t hear a scream.”

“I hate to point this out, but if it had impaled me in my sleep wouldn’t have had time to scream.”

“Good point.” She winced.

We stood there a moment, taking in the sight of the pole SUS.. pended from the siding. “1 suppose I’ll call my insurance company to file a claim.

“Do you want us to help you remove the pole today?” she asked. “I think we’ll leave it there because they’ll have to assess the damage. But thanks.”

“We’re so sorry,” she offered.

I wagged my finger at her. “It’s because our dogs bark early in the morning that you’re trying to kill us, isn’t it?”

“No, actually, it’s because you accidentally set off your house alarm one too many times.”

I looked toward the death spear. “Well, the alarm certainly didn’t go off when this thing came barging into the house unannounced.”

My neighbor and I parted on amicable terms, and I went back inside to find my husband standing in the kitchen. “What’s all the commotion?” he asked.

I motioned for him to follow me. We walked into the bedroom, and I pointed to the visible drywall chips on the floor by the bedside. On further inspection, we saw that my nightstand had cracked in half. The pole had sliced though the siding, the wall, and the piece of furniture.