“For the last time,” she said through clenched teeth, “I wasn’t kidnapped.”

“You were gone for five days!” her husband wailed, “and I searched every mountain high and every valley low…” but fortunately he trailed off into panicky hiccups before his dramatic declaration devolved into more song lyrics.

“You may have been gone for five days in your imaginary country, but here in the real world, I was folding the laundry while you were — what was it, dear?” she interrupted herself in a dangerously sweet voice, “searching the mountains and valleys of our wardrobe instead of fetching the iron as I asked you to?”