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Last night, as I lay in bed, I heard two hooligans in the back alley.

This isn’t unusual, since there are some young people living in the houses around us with their parents.

And by young people, I mean people in their early twenties who throw parties when the homeowners go away and have overly-loud conversations in their backyards about things most people get over in the tenth grade.

These two particular hooligans seemed lost.

I think they’d become disengaged from a shindig at the big blue house further up the alley, and now they were just wandering the streets looking for wine coolers or trouble or warm beds.

Whichever they found first.

My home contained the latter, but I was in it. And since I didn’t want either of the hooligans to join me under my duvet, I kept an ear out to make sure they stayed back the carport, endlessly setting off the motion-sensor lights.

Which was, of course, another tip-off for Dectective Meg.

They stood there for a really long time.

I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about, despite the fact that THEY WERE COMMUNICATING AT AN EXTRAORDINARY VOLUME. They seemed to have mastered the rare art of mumbling loudly.

Then I heard glass break, so I rolled my eyes and climbed up on my bed to peer through the window at them. I moved the curtain to the side just enough that I could see without them knowing I was watching.

They continued to stand there and say random things for another five minutes while I squinted through the little gap, and then it happened.

I was struck with a COUGH.

Now, y’all haven’t been around to hear what the COUGHING sounds like, so I don’t blame you for shrugging just then like, “So what? Put your hand over your mouth and keep watching, Columbo!”

You don’t understand.

To compare this COUGH to the coughs that normal people cough would be like comparing a ringtone to a Battle of the Bands.

This COUGH is in charge. And it comes without warning.

So I didn’t even have time to duck.

HACKHACKHACKrattlerattlerattlerattlethroatclear.

I held my breath. They stopped talking and looked around.

Then one of them spoke his first coherent sentence of the night:

“What the f*** was THAT?”

“Shit,” the other one replied.

And like magic, they moved back into the night (or just further down the alley.)

Suddenly, all my frustration at being deathly ill for a WEEK AND A HALF dissipated in a rush of safety and well-being.

Yeah, right.

***

When my beloved friend Catherine moved to Vancouver, she was forced to make a sacrifice.

Because she was planning to move in with me, and I was then (as now) living in a pet-free dwelling, she would have to send her cat, Henry, to live with relatives in Mission, about an hour away.

The relatives are very nice, so we know Henry is okay. But I know Catherine misses Henry sometimes.

So yesterday, she went off to Mission for a visit (to both cat and family.)

While she was there, she and her aunt were discussing how random and ridiculous statements seem to come up in our conversations more often than they do for most people.

Sometimes they are mis-hearings, sometimes misunderstandings. And sometimes they’re just really odd things we totally meant to say.

We then overuse these phrases until everyone wants to punch us.

For example, the other night, I told Catherine if she continued to do something, I would never speak to her again (I was, of course, kidding.)

Since this didn’t seem to bother her at all, I decided to up the pathos a little: “Can you imagine how horrible it would be to live with someone you weren’t speaking to? You’d just see one another in the hallway and not say a word. Passing like ships in the night.”

Catherine was silent for a moment.

“Doesn’t that sound terrible?” I prompted. More silence.

Then finally: “Why would you want me to pass you chips in the night?”

We have used these words on a regular basis ever since.

It’s just how we roll.

Anyhow, after laughing about this for a moment and probably feeling a bit sorry for us, Catherine’s aunt told her own story.

First, a little background: her relatives, in addition to Henry the Cat, have a dog named Roxy.

Roxy is a very cute puppy, but she tends to be a little confused about how to assert her Alpha Dog dominance over a cat who could not care less about power dynamics.

So, every now and then, she, uh… gets a little amorous with Henry.

At those moments, Henry just gets a far-off expression like he’s trying to think about Hello Kitty until Catherine’s family notices what Roxy’s up to and shoos her off.

It’s a bit embarrassing for everyone concerned. They were actually fairly horrified at first.

But just as with Paris Hilton and Survivor, they’ve become somewhat jaded to the spectacle now.

That’s why, the other day, when the dog put the moves on Henry once again, her aunt’s only retort from across the room was, “Come on, Roxy. Anyone can hump a cat.”

I say use it until someone trademarks it.