The date night before Valentine’s Day was the evening Eric and I almost got shot. Again, in an effort to put our worries and responsibilities aside for a moment and have fun.

Psychologists advice against talking about your kids on date night, so I stuck to my usual conversation topics: our lab-chow’s ear infection and overgrown nails, my shrinking pituitary tumor (my periods are regular again!), and the fungus on my toenail that seemed to be disappearing.

Now Eric is good enough listener (especially for a guy). But he spent the first half of our dinner looking out the window behind me, mesmerized, as if he were watching ET ride a bike.

“What’s your problem?” I asked him. Was something out there more interesting than my toenail fungus?

He grimaced, wearing a concerned expression that didn’t suit a romantic dinner.

A minute later, a rough-looking street guy ran through the doors of our quaint Greek restaurant yelling, “He’s got a gun!”

After a loud exchange between him and the manager just a few feet from our table, the man left. And Eric filled me in on the drug deal he had witnessed, followed by a chase between two dudes, followed by another chase between the druggies and a pair of policemen.

But this much is good: I knew that my meds were working and that I was in a good place, because my immediate reaction to the gun alarm was fear (of dying), not relief (to die). I had too many things planned…like seeing my kids graduate from high school, and meeting my grandkids, and of course more date nights with a distracted husband.