Go back to shhhhleep

Some of the world's greatest discoveries have been made by accident - chocolate chip cookies, potato chips, Viagra. And now it seems I'm going to add my own stroke of accidental genius to the mix.

"You!" Tracey came into the kitchen and snapped at me this morning.

"What?" I asked in a very good impression of our two year old using her new favourite word.

"You know!"

I really didn't.

"Last night," she sneered lovingly at me. "When the baby woke up." I must have continued to stare at her with a dumb look on my face because she went on. "At about 2am." I could vaguely remember the kettle boiling and covering up my back after a cold draft of wind, but that's about it. I certainly didn't open my eyes and look at the clock. "You woke me up to go fix the baby a bottle."

"I did not," I said confidently, although I admit there have been times over the past decade where I've accidentally woken Tracey up when my foot has involuntarily jerked at the sound of a baby's cry and struck my sleeping wife's leg. But it's not like I ever did it on purpose.

"Oh, it's not like you said 'Hey, Tracey, the baby needs a bottle' or anything obvious like that," she said in what can only be termed a mocking tone. "Oh, no. Instead you had your face all up in my ear and you were whispering 'Shhhh! Shhhhhhh!' louder and louder until you woke me up."

I went for the save. "So even deep asleep, I still attempt to pacify our baby. Wow. My subconscious never rests."

"You were waking me up!" She shook her head at me. "Don't pretend like you don't remember."

I really, genuinely don't.

But that doesn't mean I'm not going to claim it as a stroke of fatherly genius. I wonder if I can patent this - The Bruce Shhh Method. The BruShhh Method! Genius aside, it seemed I needed to dig myself out of a hole earlier than usual this morning.

I went for the usual bold-faced lie. "You know as well as I do-"

"Shhh!" hissed Tracey at me, and sat down to deliberately drink her morning coffee..

"-if I heard the baby cry-" I continued.

"Shhhh!" she interrupted again.

"-that I would immediately get up-"

"Shhhhh!" Tracey hissed at me loudly and pointedly. And I finally noticed a squawk coming from the bedroom.

At least she was grinning when I went to fetch our baby.

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