No monkeys

I went to coffee with a friend yesterday.  Well, we don’t usually have coffee – we meet up at a coffeeshop and have tea.  But yesterday, she plunked down with the biggest cup of coffee the place offers.  And not a latte type coffee either, no a strong black coffee.  She was looking haggard – like she hadn’t slept in a week.  Being the polite person I am, I didn’t say a word.  Merely raised an eyebrow as I watched her settle in.  Knowing her daughter is past the ‘baby don’t sleep all night’ phase and not yet in the ‘teen's out all night panicking parents around the world’ stage, I couldn’t figure out why she looked so bad.  “All I have to say is ‘No monkeys’.”  She announced after she had gulped down half of her drink.  Uhm, what?  Now I’ve heard the expression, ‘Not my monkey, not my circus.’  However, I’m not sure this was what she was referring to.  We talked for a bit before she was ready to fill me in on what was up with her.  Turns out her husband had woken her up at something like 4 AM.  He had done this by shouting what she thought was “No monkeys.”  Because she thought he was having a nightmare, she wasn’t about to wake him up (I always thought it was sleepwalkers you weren’t supposed to wake, but whatever).  So there she lay, unable to fall back asleep, afraid to move in case she would wake him up.  As they were scrambling to get breakfast, him off to work, the kid off to school, she took a moment to speak to her husband.  Turns out he actually had said, “No jumping.”  But to her dream filled brain this didn’t come across.  Seems he had something on his mind and had been unable to sleep.  Each little movement his wife made in her sleep was driving him nuts and he finally decided to say something about this.  You know how it is, misery loves company.  And thus, my friend was now tired, grumpy and ready to kill someone.  Now I know I’m not an expert on marriage.  However, my friend was focusing on the wrong thing here.  She was so angry over being woken up in the middle of the night she couldn’t wait for her husband to get home from to work so she could give it to him with both barrels.  As for me, I think she should’ve been concerned about whatever was making him lose sleep.  But, hey, what do I know?  Maybe my friend getting her beauty rest was the supreme need here.  Yet so often in life, we miss the forest for the trees.  We fail to see the elephant in the room.  I know, I know, I’ve used way to many clichés in this post already.  My point is, do we focus on the minors or the majors?  And do we even know which is which?  So get your sleep folks, you just don’t know when you’ll be startled out of some great dream by a sudden scream…