There’s been an ongoing drama rattling quietly behind the closed doors of our domestic life these last few weeks, rattling like strings of dried-out teeth from an old skeleton. I would tell you all about it, except that it must remain hush-hush (for privacy reasons, I’m not allowed to talk about it).

Yes, a moratorium has been placed on all public discussion of said drama, but I can say that I’ve arrived at a conclusion based on all related events. I didn’t just casually arrive at this conclusion, either…  I was forcibly propelled to it by simple logic. Sorry. I’m being vague, I know, and it seems unfair that I can tell you the punch-line as long as you don’t know the joke. But I do want to share the punch-line, because I’m resigned to the reality of it, and this has been no small feat.

The only possible answer to the gigantic WTF that’s engulfed the last few weeks is… Callaghan was an evil dentist in a past life.

Supporting my theory is the fact of Callaghan’s sinister antique dentist cabinet, which still lurks at the back of la bergerie on the property in France. The dentist cabinet. I wrote elaborately about it, as some of you may remember:

…it occurred to us to peek inside the beat-up old antique metal dentist cabinet that Callaghan accidentally got from a dentist office in Antibes. (Yes, by accident. It’s long story.)

NOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE.

I’d always thought there was something creepy about this dentist cabinet. The cabinet’s wide, shallow drawers had come filled with all sorts of little instruments and drills – dentistry’s accoutrements of bygone times – that Callaghan had removed for use on various projects. It could be, we thought, that the missing screws had made their way into those empty drawers at some point.  Ghostly, pain-inflicting screws, I couldn’t help but think. I peered over Callaghan’s shoulder with a bit of trepidation; it wouldn’t have surprised me if the dentist cabinet turned out to hold supernatural properties, transforming everyday objects into tiny medieval torture instruments. Contents of its drawers were not to be trusted.

The first thing you’ll notice when reading this excerpt (other than the fact that I clearly had more time to write back then) is that this mysterious dentist cabinet came to reside with Callaghan “by accident.” To which I now say, knowing what I know from these past few weeks, that there are no accidents. That dentist cabinet deliberately came home to Callaghan, who, in his present iteration of being, hasn’t been able to brush the remnants of his past evil dentist-hood off his aura. “Paybacks are a bitch,” my friends. This is karma.

Poor Callaghan. At least now that we know the root of the problem, we know that what he needs is a shaman, not a dentist, as someone astutely pointed out. Yes, others, too, have noted that the only explanation for the epic f*ckery we’ve experienced recently has to be that he was an evil dentist in a past life; that’s how absurdly obvious it is!

(Note to self: Google “shamans who specialize in past-life sadistic dentistry of the medieval persuasion.” That should get us somewhere.