History's most innocuous home invasion

Last night, Steve's parents (who are visiting from Florida) babysat Jane while we went out to a merry picnic dinner in honor of a friend's birthday, followed by an outdoor screening of Singin' in the Rain. I was even more excessively spazzy and logorrheic than usual, perhaps out of giddy confusion at Jane's absence, and everyone was very kind in response.

At the end, we stumbled home, full and fat, saw Steve's parents off to their hotel, and tumbled into bed not long after.

Around 3 am, the cat woke Steve, who tossed him outside as per his catty request, and staggered back to bed. About an hour later, I awoke to a loud crashing sound involving the baby gate separating the front room from the kitchen.

"Izzitthecat?" asked Steve, bleary.

The crashing continued. "It is definitely not the cat," I said, and got out of bed.

If you poke your head out our bedroom door and look to the right, you see this:

At night, it looks something more like this:

And what I saw at about 4:30 this morning looked something like this:

 

I gave a single short SHRIEK before leaping back into the bedroom and onto the bed in a single bound.

When I landed, I gasped: "Person!" 

As I turned on the light, Steve got out of bed himself. In the living room, trapped behind the gate and leaning one very very very drunken hand on the back of the chair, stood a young, biggish white guy wearing a black hoodie.

Steve, very composed, said, "Hey, man, what are you doing in my house?"

The guy blinked a couple of times, and his very, very drunken state was very, very manifest. (The crashing noise had been his several failed attempts to figure out how to navigate the baby gate, running up against it over and over like a not very sophisticated toy robot.)

Steve took him by the arm and led him to the front door. "Okay, you have to get out of here now."

Drunken Hoodie said something like "mrlrmblrm yeah?" and obligingly staggered to the door.

Steve put him outside and locked the front door while I dashed to the now wide open back door and closed and locked it. Then we went back to bed and said "Holy shit" at each other many times. 

Drunken Hoodie meanwhile stood around on our porch for about five minutes, then stumbled over to the wicker chair on our porch, ringing the doorbell with his shoulder on the way, and fell asleep. We decided this was acceptable until morning. (It seems likely that he had mistaken our back door for his back door when staggering home from a party blind drunk, tried it and found that we either failed to lock up when we went to bed or after letting the cat out—hey, let's not do that anymore!—and then washed up—CLANG!—against the baby gate.)

Did you know? It turns out that one's system produces a lot of adrenaline when there are strangers in one's living room at four in the morning. This makes it rather difficult to get back to sleep, unless you are Jane, who was briefly roused by about 30% at the height of the festivities, after which she snurfled and rolled over.

But not to worry! Steve and I both managed to drop off before six, at which time Hoodie woke up and rang the doorbell.

Steve went to the door and he tried, shamblingly and feebly, to come in.

"Okay, dude" (apparently Steve trends surfer under duress) "why are you ringing my bell?"

Hoodie replied, "hrmblarm josh?"

Steve explained that this was our house, Hoodie's friends didn't live here, and that he had to leave. Hoodie obligingly said "flmm yeah," lurched down the porch steps, and walked away.

And that was it! He appears not to have puked or pissed on anything, so we are calling that a win. Godspeed, hammered young hoodie man. I hope your friends take better care of you next time, or that you learn to live in a more recognizable house.

"When I write about this on my weblog," I said to Steve, "I am going to give my poor mother a heart attack." Sorry, mama!

Comments

[Betty M]

not just your mother! Heart now firmly in mouth here.

[GB]

G&S have said this sort of thing happens fairly commonly in West Campus, with the hammered young person supplied by IV rather than by City College. In fairness, West Campus must be an extremely confusing place to be very drunk, what with all the identical condo clusters. Nonetheless: AAAAAH.

[Yer Mum]

AAAAAAaaaaaaaagh

[Uncle R]

Steve was very, very brave to behave as he did with the intruder. I applaud him. As for not locking the door after putting the cat out, that is another matter. However, had your drunken intruder stumbled upon your locked back door, who knows what noise and or violence might have ensued.

I have occasional nightmares about such things. You will receive the blame should I have one tonight.

I wonder how I would have handled such a thing myself. In our neighborhood, I would be less inclined to assume benign intentions. I would also have been quite ready to put my Black Belt in Karate to use in such a situation. Hai-Yah!!!

Seriously, should that ever be necessary, it would not be pretty. As Mr. Miyagi said, "Fighting always bad. But if must fight, kick butt."

[kmkat]

We moved to rural northern MN when I was a teenager, and my father was frequently away on business trips. One night, 1:30 am, my mother, who slept on the first floor just steps away from the kitchen and front door, was awakened by a drunken young man stumbling up the hallway to the kitchen. (This was rural MN in 1965 -- no one locked their doors.) She grabbed a knife from the kitchen counter and demanded to know what he was doing in her house.

Apparently he had mistaken our driveway for another road farther up the highway, turned in, and driven up the driveway and onto the yard until his car was buried up to the bumpers in snow (this was in January) and could go no further.

After figuring out what had happened and who he was, she called someone to come take George home. In true small-town fashion, now that she knew who he was she never let him forget the incident.

I slept on the second floor and knew nothing of this until the next day.

[Elsa]

GAH! Well handled: firmness, no escalation, and a no-fuss resolution. I'm impressed! Also, vicariously and completely unnecessarily freaked out like some kind of home-invasion hypochondriac.