I’m easily startled. A car honk, a touch on the shoulder, the bark of a dog, or any unexpected anything can make me scream as if I’m being attacked. This would really bother me except I think that there are times when it’s the only thing that keeps me alive.

Sometimes I just don’t pay attention when I should. The car honks because I cross the street when I’m daydreaming. The man grabs my shoulder because I almost fall through an open man hole cover. The dog barks because I’ve accidentally gone into someone else’s house. I don’t have dementia. Not yet, anyway. I’ve always been like this when I daydream.

The times it gets annoying is when I jump at things that no one else does. Like when someone walks into the room. That’s all it takes. Allow me to set the scene…

Setting: Kitchen, dinner time. All the lights are on. Relaxing music plays on my phone. I’m stirring a pot on the stove.

My wife walks into the room.

Wife: Hi.

Me: AAAAHHHH!!

You would think she’d charged at me with a handful of piranhas instead of simply appearing. I’m like every breed of nervous dog all mixed together. And this is me on anxiety meds.

The most recent incident was at the grocery store. That morning me, Melanie, and Claire (daughter #1), had been talking about what we’re going to have for Christmas dinner. We’re not having the family/friend get together that I usually throw and we were talking about changing the menu.

“Fetch me a goose,” I said, because I’ve recently watched two different versions of A Christmas Carol and it’s the most lovely thing that Ebenezer Scrooge says.

“The biggest goose in all of London,” Melanie declared, because I demanded that she watch them with me and she’s becoming brain washed.

“Can we have goose?” Claire asked. “Do they sell geese at the store?”

I looked it up. They DO sell geese at the store! At our local Winn Dixie of all places! We were enchanted. I didn’t know how big the geese get in London, but I was determined to find one so big that it would make an Englishman drop his figgy pudding.

But when we hit the meat section of the grocery store we just saw piles of frozen turkeys.

“There’s got to be one here,” I said, lifting a bird and setting it on a stack of others that I had gone through. “The website said they had them.”

I uncovered a bird towards the bottom of the freezer and Melanie, standing beside me, pointed, and yelled, “GOOSE!”

I screamed. Like, I screamed as if we’d been playing a life or death game of “Duck duck goose” and she had just tagged me with a hammer.

Why did I scream like that? Sure, she was loud and excited, but she cried “goose” because we were looking for a goose and then found a goose. My mind have been screaming “goose” the whole time we’d been at the store. Why was this a surprise?

You know what was a surprise to other shoppers? This scene:

Melanie: GOOSE!!

Me: AAAAHHHH!!

I can’t take us anywhere.

We didn’t buy the goose. It was sixty dollars, which was the bulk of our grocery budget that day. But the moment that Melanie gave me a heart attack by screaming “goose?” Priceless.