Medieval Instruments of Torture in My Hallway

I was driving home from work today -- well, to the Barnes & Noble, really, since I have a ton of writing to do -- and I started to think randomly about things I have in my house, especially the things that have no real purpose. My mind immediately leapt to the crossbow sitting in the hallway near our downstairs bathroom.



Yes, dear reader, I have a crossbow in the hallway. Yes, one of those zany weapons that looks like the bastard lovechild of a bow and a rifle. It's in a cardboard box, properly labeled with a color picture and "Crossbow" and all that good stuff, and it's leaning up against the treadmill. The slogan under the photo of a man with the crossbow is: "The Adventure Starts Here." Well, the adventure might start in the woods, or the gamelands in the neighboring county ... but I assure you the adventure doesn't start here. Not in my hallway.

Anyway, if that's not one of the weirder items in my house at the moment, I don't know what is. I'm not quite sure why this medieval apparatus is leaning against the treadmill in the hallway, but there it is. When I stumble to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I walk right by this thing as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps other women meander past guillotines in bubble wrap at 2 a.m., or saunter by wooden catapults in Tyvek envelopes near dawn ... but I walk by a crossbow in a cardboard box. One day I'm going to accidentally bump into the box, setting off the crossbow and having to explain to my husband the next morning why there is a T-shaped hole in the drop ceiling in the hallway.

He should understand, though. He's the one who put it there in the first place.

Not that any of you were surprised to hear that.