I've got something to teach you guys. I know that I'm supposed to be thinking about Thanksgiving preparation and all, but here's a lesson that really bears repeating. First, let me set the stage.

I live in an area that's probably considered traditionally suburban: lots of farmland that has been turned into your typical SUV-favored, McMansion-suffused, chain-restaurant heavy region that I never thought I'd live in on purpose. It's a little more rustic than I'm used to, having grown up in LA (which, in truth, is a mass of suburbs hooked together by freeways). There are deer, bunnies, and that damn fox that ran onto my front lawn last summer scaring the crap out of me, much to AdoringHusband's amusement. But it's not like I'm out on hundred acres of hinterlands without a neighbor in sight.

That notwithstanding, I did grow up with a crazy, paranoid mother who honestly believed that if we let our vigilance down for one minute, somebody would come into our house and kill us all. Though she didn't carry a formal diagnosis of paranoid personality disorder her behavior did make you wonder.

One time when I was in college, I was back home for summer vacation and needed to open the sliding glass doors in order to get some air. This proved to be tricky since there was an added security lock at the top of the door and the key was nowhere I could find. (Yes, even way back then we had a major alarm system with pressure sensors, window breach warnings and a bunch of other hoo-haa in place to make sure that no one came in to kill us all.) After looking in every known hidey-hole, I opted to call Mom at work to learn the location of her latest hiding place. So I'm all like, "Mom where'd you put the key for the sliding glass door?"

"Ask your brother," she replied, almost suspiciously, "he's in the house isn't he?"

"Yeah, but he's sleeping. Why can't you tell me?" I asked, confused.

"Because they might be listening," she answered with complete seriousness.

Though I didn't dare say it for fear of getting my head smacked off when she got home, I couldn't help but think, You know what Mom? If they are listening, they already know where the damn key is.

I point this all out to say that I come by my paranoia and fear of being mass murdered in my own home pretty honestly, I guess. As such, yes I have an alarm system, and we have enough wattage in front of our house to land a helicopter or small aircraft safely in our cul-de-sac. That notwithstanding, it's still a pretty damn dark neighborhood at night. A safe one, to be sure, but dark nonetheless.

Now back to the present. Last Friday evening, Luda, my trainer and I, are headed out through the garage for my twice weekly jog/torture session. Actually it's not so bad, as Luda after all this time is more babysitter than evil enforcer. We've become as close to friends as client and trainer can be. Having her show up at my door twice a week merely makes sure that I do exercise rather than doing let's say, anything else more pleasurable, such as cutting my toenails.

It's about 6:30 PM and dark. I'm futzing with my Nike training app on my iPhone, she's turning on the flashing lights on my running vest (thank you, AdoringHusband) and we are blathering about plans for the weekend. We exit the garage. I'm turning to the right to head down the driveway, but she, I see out of the corner of my eye, looks left sharply toward the very dark rear of the house and exclaims, "Oh my god!"

I feel a sudden rush of adrenaline as fear overwhelms my brain. I know this all happened in just a split second, but in the moment before I whirled back to my left to assess the threat, I ran through options: run, fight, or have an instant myocardial infarction? And I considered, like any good doc making a fast differential diagnosis, what could this threat possibly be:

• A killer with a gun
• A killer with a knife
• A killer with a large stick
• Jason in a hockey mask along with Freddy Krueger
• A wild animal, like a bear
• A runaway moose
• The damn fox mutated to 50x his size
• A pack of wild dogs
• A passel of mutant feral cats
• My neighbor waiting to impale me with his flag
• My other neighbors turned into flesh eating zombies holding their hot peppers
• The neighborhood police department coming to arrest me for jogging while fat
• A fire breathing dragon
• Mutant bunnies (Night of the Lepus anyone?)
• One, or more, of my crazy ex-boyfriends dancing naked in the backyard
• Luda's crazy-ass ex-husband whose ass I would have to kick on general principle, or
• My mother, visiting from the spirit world, to beat me about the headparts for driving a station wagon

So in that brief second, I became as taut as a violin string, ready to face whatever threat had dared show itself from the darkness of my backyard (as long as it wasn't that damn snake from last summer again...I don't do snakes!). I whirled around, arms bent, fists clenched, about to knock some mutant bunny's ass only to find Luda looking off into the black shadows behind the house.

"What?!" I rasped. "What's wrong?!"

"You cut down that big tree! I wasn't expecting that," she replied.

"That?! That's what made you exclaim, 'oh my god!'? Seriously?" I blurted as my fight or flight response started to abate.

"Well it just surprised me," she answered.

Friends, had I managed to continue adding to my list of possible reasons for Luda's yelling, "oh my god!" as we exited the garage that night, I'm not sure I ever would have arrived at, "because the maple tree was cut down" as a contender. Even with possibilities such as mutant giraffe sitting on my house or lost toddler riding a feral cat and wielding a big stick, nope, I'm not sure I would ever have arrived at the cut maple tree option.

So let's learn from this. If you are going to exclaim "oh my god" in the dark, especially around people who have been raised by paranoid parents that make us think killers are everywhere, make sure it's about more than a damn tree! Well unless it is a mutant tree running around decapitating people...

That is all for my lesson today.

Happy Turkey Day!