Ever since a burglar attempted to break into our humble abode a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been downright jumpy.

Take the other day, for instance. I was in the midst of paperwork and on my fourth cup of coffee, when the phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and saw the call was coming from a cell phone. “Yeah, man,” the caller asked in a low and rough voice, “is Freddie there?”

Well, as you may or may not know, we’ve got no Freddies around here. We’ve got your Vernons, your Hueys, your Lawrences and of course your Little Charlies. On a cold day when the kids are home and everyone is stuck inside, we’ve got your Idiots and Stupid Morons, but never, not once throughout the history of the family, have we had a Freddie. I told the man, “You have the wrong number.”

He didn’t say “goodbye,” as a normal caller would have; rather he sat there breathing. So I did as any sane person who was on her fourth cup of coffee would have done and I hung up on him.

Normally, I would have gone back to my paperwork and dismissed the call as a simple wrong number. But I guess I decided it’d be more fun to freak out.

I heard a voice in my head that reminded me of a persistent kid. “Are the doors locked?” the voice asked. “Are they really locked? Can you be absolutely certain? Oh, sure, we checked them this morning and a couple of times before lunch and then checked them all again when we thought we heard a sound, but are we sure they’re locked?”

I knew I was being paranoid. But I couldn’t help wondering if it was God Himself telling me, “They’re coming to take you away, ha, ha. They’re coming to take you away.”

Hey, it happens.

I thought perhaps I was suffering post traumatic stress syndrome or perhaps some new affliction titled “Some Guy Simply Takes a Screw Driver to the Door and Now You’re Always Freaking Out.” Either way, I grabbed my coffee went to make sure all of the doors were locked, again.

En route, I heard my cell phone beeping with a missed call. And you know how something like a beeping cell phone can be in the movies? Well, my imagination is nothing if not overactive, and loves to play Spooky Movie in my head. Therefore, my brain decided it would be fun to take me to the cell phone in four jerking motions and I could hear a pound of the drums with each one. Boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom.

Or it could have just been the beating of my heart.

When I finally reached the cell phone, I noticed that I had missed two calls at or about the same time the man with the low and rough voice had phoned and I began shaking like a leaf. I looked to see who had called and who do you think it was that had rung me twice? Was it my mother calling to say she’d like to take the kids for the weekend? Was it my eldest son calling to say he’d like to spend an evening at home? Could it have been my husband calling for a mid-day “I just called to say I love you; I just called to say how much I care?”

Oh, heck no!

The calls came from the same number that the man with the low and rough voice had called from when he phoned to see if Freddie was here.

And we don’t have a Freddie!

So I wasn’t happy. After all, who makes a wrong phone number to both someone’s home and their cell phone? And who has Freddies just hanging about in the middle of the day?

The suspense can really build at a time like this. And if I were burglar-mystery writer, I’d go on to say how I went outside, because that’s what stupid people in burglar-mysteries do. And I’d say that when I was the most frightened and the barometric pressure had changed with the fear of the moment, a cat jumped in my path and scared the bejiggers out of me and that I breathed a sigh of relief right before a gloved hand covered my mouth.

But it wasn’t a burglar mystery. It was a real moment in the life of a woman with a caffeine-induced imagination that likes to play Spooky Movie. And it wasn’t a burglar calling to verify my location. It was a business acquaintance who had all of my phone numbers who was simply trying to call Freddie.

I still don’t know who Freddie is, but I’ll tell you this, I am so switching to decaf.

Lori Clinch is the mother of four sons and the author of the book “Are We There Yet?” Her e-mail address is clinch@atcjet.net.