Tales from the dark side

Last night at 3:15 a.m. Howard got a phone call from a distraught woman who was not me. He is always getting middle-of-the-night phone calls from distraught women!

This one was typical. That is a picture of her up above, right before she rolled over and called Howard. I am sure that is what she looked like. She called Howard and left a message saying she was interested in hearing about one of his under-the-car GPS vehicle tracking devices.

"Why do they always call me in the middle of the night?" Howard said this morning.

Here is where my woman's intuition comes into play. Howard is always wondering why these people call in the middle of the night when they know he will not answer. I said, "Howard, well, she's sitting up, and her husband isn't home."

He said: "Oh, yeah. I guess that's what's happening."

You can picture it. The woman sitting up by herself at 3 a.m. And she decides that finally she is going to take this one step. She gets on the Internet and she sees Howard's site with that picture of him in his suit with his glasses. He is cute. He is smiling. He looks like what he is, which is someone you can trust.

She thinks: I will take this step. At least then I will feel I have done this one thing to get my life under control.

That was like me with my insomnia. A couple of years ago, as I may have mentioned, there would be about three nights a week when I did not sleep at all. If you have ever been in this situation you know it is hard to get out of it. Because the less you sleep, the more you worry about that you are not sleeping, and eventually you decide there is no hope.

Here is a picture of me with my insomnia.


There was a moment when I said, I am just going to take this one step, I am going to call the sleep clinic. At least then I will have done something, I said.

And I did! And I got better. That was another thing that Leonard Pennario and I talked about a lot, insomnia. He had trouble sleeping. Well, who doesn't, at least once in a while?

And what didn't Pennario and I talk about? That is another question.

Anyway, back to this woman. There was this kind of catch in her voice. Howard hears from a lot of cool law enforcement types but he also hears from these lone desperate women. This one national columnist even did a story in which she interviewed Howard about these calls. The story was headlined, "Happy Valentine's Day, You Cheating Pig."

The moral of the story: If you are dating someone who does not call when he says he will or who worries you by not being where he is supposed to be, get out now!

Steer clear!

Otherwise you might wind up on the phone with Howard in the middle of the night.

You do not want that!