Last Saturday morning, I woke to find that I had a glove on my left hand. It was a brown Isotoner, the stretchy kind that takes a bit of wiggling your fingers around to get them into the right slots. With my eyes still closed, I noticed that my left hand felt a little odd and stiff.
When I looked, there was the glove. I think I shrieked although I can't say for sure. Certainly, I felt entirely creeped out to discover that at some point in the night I must have gotten out of bed, opened a dresser drawer, found a glove, put it on and then gone back to bed leaving the drawer open, which is probably the strangest part of the adventure.
I never leave drawers open. I had no recollection of putting on the glove, so my first thought was to blame someone else. The obvious choice was my husband since no one else lives in the house.
I wondered if perhaps he was trying to make me think I'm crazy like Charles Boyer did to Ingrid Bergman in the movie "Gaslight" so he could put her in the loony bin and get all her money. But then I remembered I have no money, so there went the motive. Besides, my husband has a cast on his right wrist now and when I accused him of putting a glove on me, he insisted on doing a re-enactment to prove he couldn't have done it.
He was acting suspiciously like O.J., though kind of over-playing his trouble with the glove so I wasn't entirely convinced.
Still, I had to consider other possibilities. I briefly entertained the possibility that a serial glover had broken in someone with a hand-in-glove fetish, perhaps, who gets his kicks out of slipping gloves onto middle-aged women. The theory fell apart, however, when I realized the dogs would have barked if a stranger had entered the house.
(Well, perhaps not Tom, who is a sound sleeper, but Huck can be counted on to raise the alarm.) I've also considered the possibility that the ghost who once lived in our large wicker basket has returned to our house and taken up residence in the dining room ceiling light. I've suspected this for a while now because Huck sometimes stalks the light.
With raised hackles, she growls deep in her throat as she walks stiff-legged around the table, keeping her eye on the light all the while. (Tom hides in the cellar when she does this.) But the ghost seems to stay in the light, so he's an unlikely culprit.
I had to conclude that I did it myself. I've told several people about the incident and have found their reaction to be a bit of an eye-opener. My son Sean said he never put on a glove but sometimes he eats soup in his sleep.
He said the first thing he does in the morning is check the kitchen garbage for cans to see what he'd been up to in the night. My friend Terry said I've probably developed a psychiatric disorder. I was concerned about a brain tumor.
(Terry and I both jump straight to the worst case scenario.) Regardless, she's certain she'd have put on both gloves if it had been her. My friend Lisa asked if I'd checked to make sure I hadn't strangled someone in the neighborhood in the night.
I haven't gone door to door, but at least I was able to report there was no blood on the glove. My friend Jeff said he wishes his wife Georgann would put on gloves during the night because sometimes he finds her sleep-weeding in the garden at 3 a.m.
and her hands get dirty. I'm relieved I'm not the only one who goes bump in the night. So I figure, let's share.
What is the weirdest thing you ever did in your sleep? Send me an e-mail at the address below or write to me at the Record, 40 Mulberry St., Middletown, NY 10940.
I'll print your stories in an upcoming column. n There are 477 days 'til Jan. 20, 2009.
Beth's column appears Monday. Talk to her at 346-3147 or at bquinn@th-record.com.
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