It was Sunday. This past Sunday. Mother’s Day, in fact. Which reminds me to wish a Happy Belated Mother’s Day to all you mothers out there. And to anyone else who qualifies, though I can’t fathom who that might be.
Right, Sunday. I had things to do, mothers to see.
This post falls more in the ‘things to do’ category prior to the ‘mothers to see’ category. Though the ‘mothers to see’ task was somewhat dependent on the ‘things to do’ task.
I decided to run. Yes, run. I, who have scoffed voluminously at running. I, who used the Back to the Future 3 line, ‘Run for fun? What the hell kinda fun is that?’ every time someone told me that he/she ran for fun.
Why? Well, there are many reasons. Eh, who am I kidding? There’s one. I don’t want to invest in a gym. So, I’m finding ways of staying in shape that don’t require that investment at this point.
I know what all you runners are thinking. I hope he knows what he’s doing. I hope that he invested in good shoes. To the former, I say nope. To the latter, I say yep. Purchased them from a runner’s store in Grand Central Station. From the woman who looked like she was a runner. Not from the young, fat guy who liked to make sarcastic jokes.
Back to the running. I left the grandparents’ house at about 10. Decided I’d take only my wallet and the key to drive the car. Parked at Chick’s, a restaurant down on Beach Street. And proceeded to run to Lake Street and back again. A four-mile run in 40 minutes that wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Stretched and got back into the car.
Proceeded to do some last minute Mother’s Day shopping. Saw fathers and kids galore in the stores at approximately noon. Chuckled a tad. And then recognized my hypocrisy. Then chuckled some more.
I proceeded back to the homestead. Caked in dried sweat with almost a full-grown beard – I hadn’t shaved in a week. My loot and jacket in my hands. I climbed the steps to the front door, opened the screen, and tried the door. Locked. I knocked. Nothing but the barking dog. My grandparents are somewhat hard of hearing; well, my grandfather is, and my grandmother could have been doing laundry. I ring the doorbell. Still nothing.
From behind me, I hear a voice saying hello. I turn to see the neighbor across the street peaking our her door. A middle-aged woman seemingly happily married and with two children. ‘I saw them leave about a half hour ago.’ I replied with an ‘okay’ and a ‘thanks’. I initially thought, how nice of her. Then, I thought, how strange. This little street where my grandparents live is a miniature spy network with everyone keeping an eye on everyone else. Good, in some ways. Spooky in others.
Locked out. The dog’s barking. And I’m in a sweaty t-shirt and running pants on the front porch with the neighbors spying on me. Good stuff.
I decide that I’m going to assess the situation. My first option is the back door. But no, it’s locked too. That left windows. All of the basement windows are screwed shut, not to mention they’re too small for my frame. That meant the second story windows. The picture window in front was out. I would have had to break it. There are three other windows across the front. But, I was concerned with the spying. So, I went to the side. A couple windows. One into the grandparents’ room. One into mine. Didn’t seem feasible. I had nothing I could use to reach them.
The three back windows remained. One into the dining room. One into the kitchen. And another into my room. Still, the windows are about eight feet from the ground, meaning I couldn’t reach them without climbing onto something.
Well, there was something in the grandparents’ backyard. A weird wooden frame looking thing that looks like it should have been thrown away about ten years prior. Peeling white paint. Uneven. Rotting wood. In other words, perfect.
I steadied the ‘thing’ beneath the window to my room. And proceeded to climb onto it. I heard some cracking and shifting and other questionable noise. But it held. I pushed the screen up. Then the window. Voila; I had my entry. Except I still needed to get through the window itself, which would require a jump from the rickety ‘thing’ on which I was standing. By that time, I had no other alternative. A little while longer and some neighbor would have been calling the cops on me. I had to chance it.
So, I jumped. And pulled myself into the room. I kissed the rosary that hung from the window. And then closed and locked said window to ensure that no one else could perform the same stunt. Especially when I was soundly sleeping on some random night in July. Or something.
Today, I ran too. And I brought all of my keys.
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