Let me set the stage:
I moved to Georgia. I met a girl. This girl and I like each other a great deal. She comes over, and we’re sharing a rather close, quiet, intimate moment with each other. I’m a gentleman, so I’ll just leave the situation at that. Furthermore, I just bought a house, and in preparation for her visit, hung a lot of blinds in the windows—as one should for ‘normal living’—but just didn’t get time to hang all of them before she arrived. No big whoop, but at least the neighbors can’t watch us necking on the living room couch.
Anyway, back to this moment: We’re enjoying each other’s company when we hear this knock knock knock knock on the front door. Not expecting company, I’m slightly startled, but say to my girlfriend, “Aw heck, if we ignore it, they’ll just go away. . .” Yeah, they don’t take the hint.
A few seconds pass, when we hear KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK DING DONG KNOCK KNOCK POUND POUND KNOCK DING DONG on the front door. :dubious:
A few more seconds later, I hear steps on my back deck and hear the same KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK POUND POUND POUND POUND KNOCK POUND KNOCK KNOCK! :eek:
Immediately, I glance over at the one damned window in my master bedroom that doesn’t have a set of blinds in it. . . and realize that you can lean over the deck a little bit, and see right into my bedroom, right onto the damned bed. :eek: :smack: But what also flashes through my mind is that the garage may be as engulfed in flames as I am with her at this point.
In the flash of an instant, I look at my girlfriend and say, “Sh*t, this ain’t good. The damned house could be on fire. I’ll go check it out, stay here!” With the speed of Superman emerging from the phone booth, I throw on my clothes, and immediately run out onto my front porch. The first thing I look at is my truck, her car, and the garage—no smoke, no heat, no nothing: thus, no fire. Instantly, my panic turns to ire as there seems to be nothing wrong with my house, yet I was interrupted as if my new home were engulfed in flames.
I look around, and see five people on my back deck: my two neighbors, and three new people. Now, my neighbors are pretty cool people. He’s a retired “Chief” from the Navy, who served as a bubblehead (sub driver). She’s a sweetheart wife, who stayed with him the whole time. Both of them are diehard Harley riders, and just great, lively people to have around in the neighborhood—I want to be that cool when I grow up—but just not that intrusive.
Anyway, “Bud” sees me from the back deck and says, “Hey! I wanted to introduce you to some new neighbors!” Trying to think fast, I say, “Well hey, nice to meet you! Couldn’t you have waited for a guy to finish his number two first?!?” A couple of the ‘new folk’ wander over to exchange hands and greetings, when “Bud” says, “He was probably in there having sex!” I ignore his comment, and shake hands with one or two people I didn’t really catch the name of at the moment.
I play things down as best I could over the next five minutes, and when I finally am able to draw ‘the enemy’s fire’ away from the back deck and open window to my bedroom, I meet them in the lawn between our houses, and politely mention that I ‘still gotta go to the bathroom’, and make my way back into the house.
Basically, they interrupted us, just so I could “meet the neighbors”. :mad: :mad:
Still fired up from the intimate moment, the panic of a house on fire, the ire of it just being neighbors, and a shitload of adrenaline in my veins, I install that set of blinds in the one window in less than five minutes. I’ve got one foot on the bed, one on the window sill, with four machine screws in my mouth, a Phillips screwdriver bit behind my ear, and my Black & Decker power drill is punching holes in the windowsill as fast as Lennox Lewis can throw a right hook into someone. The brackets are in, so I loose the drill bit and let it onto the floor. Within 30 seconds the blind’s brackets are in, and the housing is in the brackets. Another few seconds later, the blinds are down & closed, and I’m standing there with a power drill in one hand, a handheld screwdriver in the other, blinds in the window, and am covered in fear/hate/panic sweat and sawdust.
And she swooned.
I’ll kindly let the neighbors know that I’m a relatively quiet guy, and that they ought not hit the door like that unless the damned house actually is on fire. And if the house is actually on fire, they can try to call and at least leave a message on the machine which I’ll hear if I’m home.
It was nearly as bad as the time when my mother damn near walked in on me and my girlfriend back in high school. Since then, I’ve grown up and bought a power drill.
Tripler
Oh, what engineers do for love.
