live to write another day
My first experience with someone breaking into my home, that I remember or know about, was when we lived in Kansas. There was a man who was breaking into people�s homes and tickling their feet while they were asleep.
I thought it was absurd as well when I had heard it on the news and I did not believe the neighbors who had shared that this had happened to them. This is one situation where I should have learned the lesson NOT to laugh at people�s potentially unbelievable stories about events in their lives. I did not learn that lesson and just like the concept of Pi, I understand where it is coming from and why it is important but it is information that I do not value or use.
One night, our air conditioning broke, it broke across the whole section of the Army Base we were living on and that was the last night I ever slept with a window open. My bedroom was on the second floor of our town home � a home reportedly once occupied by a young Lieutenant Eisenhower and his family, a story no one in our family believes but repeats because it sounds cool � with the bedroom facing the street. Again, it was two in the morning and I awoke feeling something tickling my feet.
My first thought was that it was our beloved dog, Buddy, who was a puppy at the time, licking my feet. My second thought was that it was my sister, who thinks she is a slick prankster, but she really is not. I had to find out whom it was, because if it was my sister I was going to kick her in the face, if it was Buddy I was going to put him back in my sister�s room where he belonged. I figured it was Buddy because I could hear my sister snoring in her room. My sister snores as if it is her job, if she does nothing else well she snores like a professional.
With this in mind, I sat up and it was an adult man tickling my feet, I was horrified. I did not know if I should kicking in the face but I was pretty sure that putting him in my sister�s room was a bad idea. He decided for me quickly crawling out of the window and escaping.
My parents would not wake up and did not believe me when they did. I was disappointed that our new dog of ours did not make a ton of noise when our house had been broken into. What good is a dog that does not work as a poor man�s alarm system? Our previous dog, a boxer, would have torn that man limb from limb or at least made a bunch of noise like he was going to attack my assailant. No one believed me that this happened, but it did happen.
So, last night something had fallen and made noise. I decided to get up and see what was going on. There had been mice in the building, so maybe they had made the noise. If someone had broken in and was going to kill me they would eventually come in the bedroom so, why wait? Finally, my iPod was sitting on the dining room table charging and if I confronted the burglar maybe I could have saved it from being pawned to someone for drug money. I knew I had to get up and do something; my life and my iPod were in peril and whatever was on the other side of the door would be a story. That story would tell of my heroism in the face of great danger or how something insignificant can make you look foolish.
I went into the living room and turned on the lights and noticed that my door was still locked and chained shut so I figured I had being laying in bed worrying about strange men tickling my feet for nothing, I took my baseball bat just in case someone was in the apartment. I went from room to room scaring myself to death until I reached the kitchen where there was a mess all over the floor.
My tiny suction cup clock from Ikea had taken a nosedive off the refrigerator, and made a noise disproportionate to its size and created an entry disproportionate to the size of the event. In perspective, had something interesting actually happened in my apartment I would not be here to write about it today.
