I woke up to the sound of gunfire in my house. I rarely take a nap on the weekends, but with my sinus infection still putting up a good battle and the kids safely tucked away in my bed with a movie I thought it would be safe. I sneaked into Max’s room, laid down among the stuffed dinosaurs and fell asleep. It couldn’t have been twenty minutes when I heard the unmistakable sound of machine guns ripping through our house. I jumped out of bed and walked into our family room.

David was sitting in the family room with the TV on “fine-tuning” our home stereo system. Apparently, this delicate task can only happen by watching “Saving Private Ryan” with the volume set to a level that was so loud David didn’t notice I was actually talking to him. When he did turn the volume down we could hear Lucy crying in the next room. Not just a small weeping but a full-on “I’m going to throw up I’m crying so hard”. I innocently asked “why is she crying?”. And David, with only the wisdom a husband could possess said “Oh, I turned off their movie and told them to lay down and take a nap.” I stood there for a moment dumbfounded. First, Lucy is almost 5 and hasn’t been required to take a nap for at least 6 months which would clearly explain the tears. However, even if that weren’t the case is playing “Saving Private Ryan” at a decibel level that actually will cause the entire family to have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder conducive to nap time? The good part to this story is that I didn’t say any of those things. Instead, I said “I don’t think they can nap with the volume so loud”. When I went into my room to check on the kids they were both sitting straight up on the bed crying and David – in an apparent effort to make the environment more soothing – had put on classical music at a very low volume level. The volume on the radio was low enough that the kids could still very clearly feel and hear the effects of the tanks rolling through Normandy.

For other husbands let me just clear something up so this mistake won’t happen in your house.

See the kind of public service I provide here?