Somebody just broke into my damn apartment

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So MrWhatsit and I spent a nice quiet evening watching the SNL Halloween special, having a cup of tea, and then heading our respective ways, him to bed with Whatsit Jr. and me to the office to catch up on some Web surfing.

About twenty minutes later I hear some loud crashing in the hallway outside our front door… and then the loud crashing kind of sounds a lot closer, like inside the apartment. I thought maybe MrWhatsit had got up for a drink of water or something and tripped over a lamp. (It happens.) So I get up from my chair to go investigate, and as I get to the office door…

…I see a HUGE GUY IN A CLOWN COSTUME lurching down the hallway towards me! I am not making this up, folks. Clown costume. Face paint. Rainbow colored 'fro. I immediately slammed the office door in his face and hit the floor in a prone position, “in case he has a gun and is going to shoot through the door at me.” (Rational thought had left the building approximately 2.5 seconds earlier.) I then yelled, “CALL THE COPS!” and then heard MrWhatsit yell from the bedroom, “Dude! Dude! You do not live here!”

MrWhatsit apparently escorted him out of our apartment and into the hallway, where interestingly enough, a friendly officer was already waiting to detain him. (Maybe we weren’t the first apartment he wandered into on his drunken little odyssey.) I came out of the office shortly thereafter and tended to Whatsit Jr., who was pretty upset by all the ruckus.

Turns out, the dude was from Walla Walla, so was probably attending a Halloween party at a friend’s apartment, got smashed off his ass to the point that, according to the officer, he did not know his name, where he lived, or even what city he was currently in, and then got lost trying to find his way back to his friend’s apartment. (This part at least is semi-understandable, as every apartment in the complex has the exact same layout.)

Let me just say, for the record, that I have been present at a grocery store robbery, have seen my infant son put on a ventilator, have experienced a 6.8 magnitude earthquake, and have been in a roll-over car accident, and I can definitively say without a doubt that opening my office door to a huge drunken clown was the most terrifying moment of my entire life.

Dude, that totally sucked. I think I’m going to have another cup of tea now.

2

Glad you’re OK. Whoo! I can understand the anxiety of not knowing where Bozo’s coming from.

3

Oh man, as though having some drunken idiot break into your house isn’t enough, he had to be dressed as a clown?! shudders

4

Was he the drunken, crying on the inside kind of clown?

5

Whoa, that is the stuff of nightmares right there! How much damage did he do to your locks by bashing through them?

6

that is scary. i think it was rather smart of you to hit the deck. you never know what an intruder has weapon wise. clowns have been known to be serial killers.

your husband did rather nicely dealing with the situation, and the intruder. he deserves anothe cup a.

i remember that a drunken costumed college student was killed going to the wrong house.

7

Are you sure it wasn’t Robert Downey Jr.?

8

Yeah, I once was staying with my ex-sister-in-law in Chicago when I was about 17. We went out to see NIN that night (sober, btw) and when we returned to her apartment, we got the wrong floor. We were wondering why the key gave us so much trouble, but we got in and sat down on the couch before a friend said “wait a minute … did Dawn have a computer this afternoon?”

Luckily no one was home, but we got the HELL outta there fast.

9

Yeah, on the list of “Scariest Costumes for Intruders to Be Wearing”, I think “clown” is second on the list only to “hockey mask”.

MrWhatsit is currently my personal hero (as though he weren’t before) and has been informed that appreciation will be shown in whatever way he prefers. The gleam in his eye when I said this makes me think that somehow he will not be asking for a gift certificate to the men’s department at Nordstrom’s.

Our door is not terribly messed up, because apparently the thumb lock was only half turned, so rather than actually busting through the lock, Insane Clown Posse just managed to jiggle the doorknob enough to get it to open on its own. We didn’t have the chain on – although let me assure you that from now on whenever we’re home at night WE MOST DEFINITELY WILL.

Am pretty sure it was not Robert Downey Jr., although I did not get a really good look at the guy’s (clown-painted) face.