
So it’s October 30th and I’m frantically trying to finish a paper that isn’t going as well as I’d like and I should have been done with last week when I started it. The boy just set off for bed 20 minutes before and Oprah is giving people the chance to do charity work with someone else’s money.
I hear knocking at the back of the house and I’m a little peeved that the boy is messing around instead of sleeping, but I grumble to myself and ignore it.
The knocking gets louder. What the heck? I walk into the living room heading for the bedroom and I hear it again, but this time it’s on a window.
“Who is it?” I bellow in an o so feminine voice, no answer.
Sonny! That shit came up here without calling and he’s playing a prank on me. That’s it! The pounding gets louder, it sounds like it’s on my office window but I can’t see anyone on the other side.
“WHO IS IT?!” Again there’s no answer, but the boy comes out of his bedroom eyes wide and frightened. Again we hear knocking, this time at the front door!
“WHO’S THERE?!” I’m really angry and scared now, if it is someone meaning to do harm I’m going to get them first. There’s no answer, I demand an answer one last time as I look around for the phone and I hear it.
“Christine”
“Christine (landlady’s last name)?
She answers yes in a wobbly voice and I fling open the door to find my soon to be 70 year old landlady shivering on my porch at 9:30 pm in nothing more than pants, a t-shirt, a summer weight house frock and slippers.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as I try to control the twitch in my left eye from the adrenaline rush shooting through my body.
She’s panicking and can hardly get the words out, “I locked myself out and I don’t know what to do.”
“Oh! let me grab a flashlight and see what we can do. Boy go back to bed and don’t worry.” I walk through the gate connecting our yards and open the slider to her back porch sticking my foot through first to keep her cat inside.
This was my first meeting with her very large cat Buttons and Buttons didn’t like my uppity attitude. It was instant dislike on his part and it hurt my feelings. He growled and hissed at me the entire time I was trying to get her door open.
Thankfully her porch was enclosed and warm, but the locked door was the storm door, so no chance anyone else had a key to the thing. I tried the window at the bottm first but the glass wouldn’t slide up. I stepped back and looked the door over.
“I bet if I get a screwdriver and take the frame off, I can get to the latch.” So I walked back across the frost to my house for tools to get the job done and feline greenies to suck up to the angry cat. Back on the porch I unscrewed the storm door frame and opened a small gap that the screwdriver couldn’t fit through all the while the cat is still growling in the background. (This cat is big and if he wanted to, he could take me.)
“Hmm, I need a butter knife.” Back out into the cold and to my house to get the wonder tool of the ages (The butter knife and the high heeled shoe are a must for any tool box.) and trudge back to the porch of large hissing gato.
I try the butter knife in the gap I made by removing the frame, but I can’t quite catch the little latch that locks it into place. I press my face against the glass trying to figure out exacty where that latch is and look down at the bottom of the door again. On a whim I slide the butter knife along the bottom edge and the window lifts. I unlatch the door, replace the frame and reassure her that it was quite alright to come get me when she got locked out and walk home to finish the paper in what little time is left.
And that dear teacher is why my paper is incomplete and my hands are shaking and I’m not even sure I care right now. Because I got owned by a little old lady who was too frightened to realize that she scared the living bejeezus out of me the night before Halloween.