Author’s Note – This is inspired by Bonnie Neubauer’s Take Ten For Writers, a fantastic book that I highly recommend. This prompt is to take four words and write four unrelated paragraphs based on an at least partially true story, starting each of them with the phrase “I wasn’t”.  My words are flashlight, a mistake, potatoes and neighbor. This is the first paragraph. Three more will follow.

     I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I once found out that all you need to feel secure when strange noises freak you out is a loving boyfriend and father, a flashlight and a screwdriver.  My husband and I were dating and he was spending time with my family when my sister heard a weird noise in her bedroom closet. Since our bedrooms were connected by our closets, she asked me if I heard the sound, too. I hadn’t until I stuck my head in my closet and really listened– the sound was a cross between a pipe rattling and something crawling around in the wall. It was that last sound that freaked us both out. After all, our parent’s house had bats in the attic; who knew what else could have gotten into the walls? We told my dad, who decided to make a quick sojourn into the attic “just to make sure” everything was ok (he said that like he was trying to humor us). Of course, Bill didn’t want him to face whatever unseen dragons were lurking above by himself, so up the ladder he went, armed with a screwdriver behind my dad, who had an industrial strength, Professor-Plum-in –the-attic-with-a-lead-pipe type flashlight. Honestly, as crowded as my parents attic was, I’m not sure how they could have done anything if they had come face to face with a gleaming pair of eyes. All I know is that when they came back down and told us it was just a rattling pipe, my sister and I slept much better that night knowing the world had been saved with a flashlight and a screwdriver.