Drinking and being stupid don't mix!

My husband lost his keys last night. Before I get into the 'how' of it all, I will tell you I love my husband. He's a great father, and generally, an all-around good guy. Except for when he drinks to excess. Naturally, this doesn't happen very often, but when he gets a chance to go for a night out with the boys (in this case, his hockey team), I usually send him off with a simple request: "Please don't do anything stupid." You may laugh, but this is a serious request. When my husband drinks to excess, he has two tendencies:

1. He exhibits an extreme lack of judgement.


2. He thinks he's invincible.

Independently, these tendencies are relatively harmless; together, they can be a menacing combination. In university, I witnessed my husband pick many a fight with drunker, larger opponents (if you're going to pick a fight, pick a fight with someone smaller than you, dummy!). While he may no longer pick fights anymore (thank God!), he has found other ways to prove his stupidity while drunk.

On more than one ocassion, I have had to leave the house on an HRM (a Husband Retrieval Mission). One of those missions ended with me seeing my brother-in-law naked, perched up on a chair in our kitchen (after I picked them both up from a hockey game, it was a double HRM -- my own husband and my sister's husband). I actually considered that particular evening to be a good night for me, not because I saw my brother-in-law naked, but because it wasn't my own husband making an utter and complete fool of himself. Yes, my husband was drunk, but at least he was drunk and fully clothed!

Anyhow, that was then, this is now, and you have the background you need to understand where this is going. Last night, my husband went to a Sens game with his hockey mates. He parked his car at a local arena and they took a bus to the game. The plan was to take the bus back to the local arena and drive home (the plan, as I understood it then, involved more watching hockey and less drinking beer, little did I know!). By the end of the evening, after consuming a lot of beer, my husband made the (seemingly) wise decision to forgo the bus ride to his parked car -- he was not fit to drive. This is the point where most people would decide to take a taxi home. Not my husband, nosirree! My husband, dressed in a zip-up hoodie and flip flops (yes, flip flops) decided it would be a good idea to walk home from Scotiabank Place (we live in Stittsville). Not a terrible idea if it you are SOBER and dressed properly. However, this was not the case. My husband took on this adventure with verve, it was sort of a man vs. nature deal -- rather than walking home along a lit sidewalk, he decided to take the shortcut. You know, the one through unmarked farmers' fields. In his flip flops.

All in all, it took him about 2 1/2 hours to make it home. His trek ended with him ringing our doorbell shortly before 1am. The girls had to get me out of bed, they were scared it was a 'bad guy' -- I showed poor judgement myself, opening the door in my underwear, though truth be told, that would likely be enough to make most bad guys run for their lives. Four kids later, and the body hasn't held up quite as I had hoped, but I digress. That's not the highlight of this story. The highlight of this story occurred around midnight, when my apparently-not-very-agile husband attempted to make his way over a fence. And got stuck.

When my husband came home last night (or should I say 'early this morning'), I didn't fully grasp what had happened. I understood he had lost his keys, he was mumbling about getting stuck on a fence -- I assumed he was talking about our fence, that he was attempting to get into our backyard to gain entry to the house. We went to bed, and he blathered on about how he had "made his peace with God" while he was on the fence, whatever that means. It wasn't until the morning that I came to fully understand what had transpired the night before. My husband did not get stuck on *our* fence. My husband got stuck on a farmer's fence, in the middle of nowhere.

How did he get stuck, you ask? While I wasn't there (it never would have happened if I was there), the way it was explained to me, he got one leg over the fence, his foot got stuck in a wire square, and he fell backwards. Basically, my husband was hooked over a fence, upside down, for about a half hour. Quite a predicament, don't you think? The keys likely fell out of his pocket as he was struggling to free himself -- getting off that fence required the mother of all situps, not such an issue when my husband was younger, but it required a significant effort last night. I have spent the day alternately quizzing my husband about the events last night, and making fun of him (seriously, how could I not make fun of him?).

While my husband was suspended from the fence, he did not scream for help (there was no point, seeing as how he was in the middle of nowhere!), and he had to use his hands to prop up his weight to ease the pressure on his caught foot (there's a Survivor challenge, a yoga pose, or both somewhere in there, I just know it!). I sort of wish I could have been a fly on the wall (or on the fence post, in this case), it would have been quite entertaining to watch. Of course, I'm glad he managed to free himself, it would have been awfully embarrassing to become a widow as a result of an act that could have garnered him a Darwin Award.

Would you like to know what my husband did after he made it off and over the fence? The obvious, of course... he marched (or limped) himself to Mac's Milk where he bought a bag of chips (battling a fence is hungry work!), then he walked home. This time, he stuck to the sidewalk, Lord only knows what else he would have gotten up to otherwise!

I hope my husband has learned his lesson, but I seriously doubt it. I am quite sure at some point in the future, he will do something that tops even this. The next time he decides to venture out of the house for a night on the town, I'm thinking of outfitting him with an HRP (a Husband Retrieval Package): taxi fare, a cellphone, a flare gun, and a foghorn (and maybe a label that reads "If found, please return to XXX"). Wish me luck!