Late Saturday night I came back from ice skating and talked to my roommate Nick, briefly before going to bed. Soon after turning my light off and closing my eyes I awoke to a loud BANG outside my room. At first I thought Nick had got angry with his thesis and thrown a text book down, but the sound was too loud, so I got up to ask Nick what it was. He was also alarmed and thought I had rolled out of bed or hurt myself somehow doing some kind of strange bedtime yoga exercises. Since we were the only ones in the house, we set off to investigate what it could have been.
Earlier that day our neighbors had a garage sale and our street had a lot more traffic than usual. Although we live in a very upscale neighborhood with virtually no crime, our house lies above a ravine that is thick with foliage. So we walked around the house to investigate. Nick was armed with a baseball bat, I carried his small maglight shining it into the bushes and yelling out “we’ve called the cops and we’re packin, so ya better take off now”. After looking around the house for a while we went inside and looked around a little more. We found something very disturbing. In Nick’s room there is a trap door in his closet that leads to the attic. The trap door was open and insulation was scattered over his clothing. We stepped back from the closet and looked at one another without a word.
Talking loudly about guns, police and my time in the ‘Special Ops’, while Nick was taking warm up swings with the bat in the living room, we finally decided that the most likely explanation to the sound was that someone had broken into our house and was trapped in Nick’s bedroom when Nick came home from dinner. This burglar had likely crawled into the attic to hide until we were gone or asleep. At this point Nick called the police, we both knew it was better to be safe than sorry.
After waiting in the living room armed with various weapons, bat, axe, wine bottle and kitchen knife, a police cruiser pulled up outside. Nick said “oh crap, it’s woman.” I rushed to put my axe, knife and wine bottle away in the kitchen and came around the corner to meet the most beautiful and young police woman I have ever met. This was very bad! As she walked in the front door she asked what the problem was and how we were doing. We told her our theory about the sound and showed her to Nick’s bedroom. Nick climbed through the trap door and shone her maglight around the attic to look for the alleged perpetrator as she waited below with me. After finding no one up in the attic, she gave her professional opinion that everything was fine here and rolling her eyes just a little (or maybe it was my imagination) she went on her fine way.
When she left Nick and I walked slowly, shoulders slumped into the living room. I lay down on the floor and wanted to die. Two grown men armed with baseball bats had let a pretty sorority girl protect them from the scary sound! We had sunk to a new low I felt, but for me, it was much worse. Nick is getting married in two weeks, I’m single, and need to maintain my reputation as an eligible bachelor. I feel sure that rep is threatened today in Knoxville. Beautiful 25 year old girls know other beautiful 25 year old girls, and everyone knows that girls talk. To make things worse this one had a CB in her car.
We got up the courage to venture into the basement to see what the sound could have been. After a few minutes searching we found that my bike tire had popped, after being over inflated by the bike shop that day. Now it seems to me that the bike tire was a suitable metaphor for my over inflated ego which also burst on that fateful night.
I gratefully acknowledge the feedback from Sarah R. and Alyssa Bell (http://www.alyssakabell.com/) to assist the telling of this story.
Cheers to Family, to the East Coast, to Nova Scotia, to Canada and a great Canadian Beer Alexander Keiths
At the Airport
Halifax Pier
Brother-in-law Dwight
Sailboats moored along the Halifax Pier
Spring Garden Road
