Please tell me about times you have massively overreacted so I don't feel like such an idiot!

[Lalalalalalalalaland]

DD aged 5 is home from school today as it i shut.

DD and I were in the living room while I was doing the hoovering when suddenly I had this overwhelming feeling someone was stood behind me, i turned round to see the back of a man dressed in black slipping in to my kitchen.

Absolutely crapped myself, left hoover running, ran to DD whilst motioning for her to be quiet, the terror in my face mesnt she actually complied for once. Grabbed the only threatening item I could see around me which was a bloody plastic shoehorn! My head went a million miles an hour but figured if we went out the back patio doors from the living room i could put DD over the fence to next door and then climb over (its only 4ft).

So I'm backing up to the patio door so as not to turn my back on the murderer in the kitchen, clutching a terrified DD and a shoehorn when the man steps out of the kitchen.

Its fucking DSS! I had forgotten he was here (though he has been here a week) he had just woken and come down for a drink, he just stood there looking at us all confused, shrugged and then trotted back up upstairs.

Now feeling like a right twat! Has anyone else massively overreacted like this!

When I was about 19/20 I was house sitting for my mum’s boss in her lovely, but very rural and isolated, house.

One night, I heard the most terrible noise. It sounded like someone being murdered in the yard. I panicked, thinking I was going to be murdered next, and called my dad. He tried to calm me down over the phone but I was sure something awful was happening. My fears were confirmed by the cat losing his mind yowling and pacing at the door.

Bless my dad, he drove to the house where I was (only about 15 minutes but still!) to find two raccoons fighting in the yard over some bird seed. He still brings this incident up occasionally...

I came over all emotional at mother thinking of nothing but saving there children. Then I remembered when we moved into our house. The back is all windows and the first thing I did was tip down the horrible curtains to fully enjoy the windows. Except at night it’s really fucking dark out there and we back onto a park. So maybe 3 nights in I wake to some moving in the garden, it’s pitch black but all my instincts are telling me there’s someone in the garden. Wake dh, who doesn’t believe me and then decides to go and look, like he’s never seen a horror movie. I’m in tears and furious try to not make a sound as he’s dicking about finding slippers. He goes, i assume it’s the last time I’ll ever see him. Get 3 year old ds, lift him sleeping into the heavy built in press and promise I’ll keep him safe. Get the heavy wooden chair from his room and hope to god there’s only 1 murderer coming. Worth noting I made a big hoo ha about leaving all devices down stairs so we got proper sleep.
Dh shouts to come and see that the outside light is on and there’s nothing there. I neglect to tell him ds is in the press and he near shits himself when he goes to give him a kiss and the bed is empty and we go through the whole thing in reverse.
Phones are beside the bed now and there’s a garden light that wouldn’t be out of place on a football pitch.

Oh, I have another one, although this one didn’t happen to me.

My boss when I was a teen/in uni was a rather eccentric woman. She lived in a very, very expensive house in a very, very posh neighbourhood. She drove a very old, beat up car and had three large dogs. (relevant)

One day she was laying in the car with the door ajar using tweezers to pick the dog hair out of the seat (I told you she was eccentric). She told me later she was there for probably 3 hours, just removing the hair and listening to the radio.

Then, all of a sudden, she was surrounded by police and other emergency workers. She hadn’t heard them come up as she was listening to the radio. She sat up to face them and they were all shocked. They’d gotten a call from one of her neighbours that there was a dead body (her, with her feet sticking out the door of the car while she picked up the hair) in an old car in this really fancy neighbourhood.

All could have been avoided if the neighbour had come to check it out but they were new the the area and didn’t recognize the car so panicked and phoned 999.

This is a story so typical of this lady it makes me laugh 15 years later. Only she would be mistaken for a dead body.

When my youngest son was three, he went through a phase of being a bit of a pain at bedtime under statement

One night I put him to bed, came downstairs and within seconds of my arse hitting the couch could hear him moving about. DH was out so I went back up to ferry him back to bed.

I couldn’t find him.

I panicked. Logically, I knew he couldn’t have got out the house so he was still somewhere, but honestly I was crying my eyes out as I tore round our tiny terrace shouting for him.

The little bugger had sneaked all the way down the stairs and was hiding behind the coats in the hallway .

I have never before or since had such a strange feeling of relief and embarrassment at the same time! My reaction was outrageous!

Bloody hell this is the best thread ever. The knife/shiny flyer cracked me up!

This is the first time in ages that a thread on Mumsnet has made me laugh out loud! Some of these are priceless, particularly the man brandishing a knife and it was actually a flyer, brilliant 😂

In Liverpool there is a place called the Fisheries. Which has fish rabbits hamsters birds ect. That you can go and look at/Buy. Fellow Scousers may also know it as the old Lister Drive bathes. Anyway when I took DD I saw a sign that read "Beware of Crawling Cobra ", so I marched over to the desk with a full on straight resting bitch saying. What's this about a snake creeping around. I hope it's tame".
The blok e be hind the desk understandably looked at me like I was a lunarfreekintic and said with a total WTF yet flat face. "Erm It's a joke"

I've been reading this in laughter, thinking I've never done anything like it...

Then remembered I nearly rang the police after I couldn't find toddler DD. I had spent 10 minutes searching for her in house and garden. She was happily playing behind a tree...
She had let herself out of the garden in our previous house, and was found on the golf course 3/4 mile from our house a few months before... And I was chasing after her wearing no coat, shoes or socks (in early spring).

Brilliant thread! 😂😂😂

Three legged cat and fanzooozi police

LackOfAdhesiveDucks 😂😂

I was walking across a supermarket car park one dark winter’s morning when I saw a terrorist - dressed head to toe in black, including a balaclava and a rifle.

This was at the height of the Irish troubles and mainland terror incidents.

I panicked, squeaked rather than screamed and fell over on the black ice in front of his looming presence.

Which then was revealed as a supermarket worker wrapped up well for the cold and carrying a litter picker!

DD had been to a birthday party and come back with a helium balloon with a nice smiley face. When I went to bed that night (DH was working away) as I went upstairs I had a feeling that someone else was there. I turned round and screamed as I came face to face with a smiley intruder. The string on the balloon had got caught on my cardigan and I’d dragged it along behind me!

When I was a teenager I went to bed one night, went to pull the curtains and saw someone in a hi-vis jacket standing in the garden. After much screaming I found out it was my dad’s jacket that my mum had washed and left hanging out on the line overnight. Quite why I’d thought that someone sneaking around in back gardens would be wearing a hi-vis jacket I don’t know...

I was alone in the house with the kids about 6 years ago (DH was away for work). I was nervy anyway as we'd just moved in and the back of the house was a crappy wooden conservatory with a weak door. At midnight there was a loud commotion in the lounge (room next to conservatory) with banging and scratching. I panicked and grabbed the kids out of their beds and bundled them into the car then called the police. They came out and were very nice - looked around the house and found nothing so went away after checking we were ok. Poor DS was wearing just a nappy sat in the car in the cold. Just after they left I was in the lounge and the noise started again. It was our large pet lizard madly throwing himself around his vivarium and scratching the glass . I did feel very bad for wasting police time.

I was a witness in a 'very heavy' case involving some extremely nasty people. I was being quite vigilant regarding personal safety, however for some reason my best friend had taken it upon herself to be extremely protective and the evening before she had checked under all the beds in my house and inside the wardrobes

The next morning, we were enjoying a walk on the beach and the receding tide had left great pools of water. As I heard the gunfire, I grabbed her arm and pulled her with me, down onto the wet sand. Thankful we were still alive at that point, we were surprised to be face to face with the large dog that had run along the edge of the water making the ack ack ack ack ack sound that was exactly like a pistol crack. His owner thought we had just fallen over 🤣

I did similar to you, OP. I was glancing absentmindedly at the front door when a silhouette hove into view through the glass, so I expected someone to knock. Instead, the door opened and a man with a beard confidently strode in. I gave a little scream.

It was my SON!

(In my defence, I’d never seen him bearded before, and he looked quite different!)

I was washing up a couple of months ago, our sink over looks the garden and the door to the kitchen is directly behind, so when you are stood at the sink your back is to the door. My husband walked in, god knows how I didn’t hear him, he must have been floating on air or something, he touched my back, I jumped out my skin and smacked him with the fairy liquid bottle 😅 thankfully it wasn’t a full one otherwise he may have ended up with a black eye.
He always says something before creeping over to me now haha

When I was about 11 or 12, I was home alone for the day for the first time. I was in bed and I woke up to a noise that sounded exactly like our kitchen cupboards being opened and shut, and the plates being moved around (or in my mind, stolen). First I picked up my riding crop that was on the floor and went to the top of the stairs and hit it really hard on the carpet three times (to let the intruder know that he/she wasn't alone). The noise stopped for a minute, then started again, at which point I called my dad. He said "Are you sure it's not the washing machine?" Turns out there was a coin in somebody's pocket that had ended up getting washed and the sound it made as it spun in the washing machine was the noise I'd heard.

So glad to hear its not just me !

If only men would read this thread and see how conditioned we are to fear them

I can’t imagine any man freaking out because he sees the silhouette of a 5’t woman looming out of the dark

It’s really sad

I love the high vis jacket one- my mum if in the garden would tap in the window with her long nails to attract my attention- one night both parents were out and I expected her to be back first. My dad for some reason tapped with his keys- I turned expecting to see mum and screamed and screamed- even though it was clearly my dad looking back

@AxisOfDick that’s a bit simplistic- I had a ground floor flat once and mistook dripping water for the sound of high heels in the middle of the night and was petrified

I used to work in a business park so lots of different companies in the buildings. We heard a commotion and looked out the window, there was a man smashing car windows and generally behaving very bizarrely. A few men from one of the other offices ran out and got him pinned on the ground. We thought we better call the police, as one of my colleagues was doing this I saw what I thought was the kind of bag that would contain a shotgun or air rifle (grew up in the countryside and my uncle had this bag for his air rifle) so I shouted, tell the police he has a gun. Turns out it was a fishing rod!

When my twins were babies, my husband got up in the night as one of them was crying. He opened the door and an ‘intruder’ was on the other side. The ‘intruder’ turned out to be a helium balloon that floated towards the door with the draught but my husband got such a fright he punched it and stubbed his toe on the cot! Meanwhile the twins had fallen asleep again and were completely oblivious to the commotion.

Forgot this one. I was in the bathroom at night with the light off, not wanting to disturb anyone. As I was washing my hands someone crept up behind me and put his hands around my waist. I bit him really hard and screamed my head off. ExH (then DH) never did that again but he was an abusive, rapist bastard so I’m glad I did it now

Lala - at least you reacted pretty fast and didn't freeze!