When I shower, I'm separated by three barriers: the bedroom door, the bathroom door, and the shower curtain. I figure that if there's a security breach in the outer perimeter, I've still got two layers between me and any potential threat to my privacy. Let's face it, in a house with three teenagers roaming rampant, scavenging predator-like for food and money at all hours, privacy is a top-tier commodity. I have a new respect for the gazelles in those nature shows that have to eat, drink and pee with their eyes rolling in all different directions in case some hungry lioness is looming in the high grass (which just so happens to resemble the grass in my lawn.) Honestly, sometimes the bathroom's the last safe haven of the watering hole I call home - the last refuge for a frustrated reader and alone-time-seeker. If it wasn't for the bathroom, I'd never get anywhere near the midpoint of the books I'll never finish.
Some time ago, I was basking behind my triple layers of safe privacy, whistling the theme from Sanford and Son and loving life for my eight solitary minutes under the shower head. Suddenly and without warning, came the sound of the security alarm.
"HONEY!"
The perimeter had been breached!
"HONEY-YOU'VE-GOT-TO-GET-OUT-HERE-RIGHT-NOW-THERE'S-A-BURGLAR-OUT-THERE!"
Keri was an extremely loud and fast talker when she breached the perimeter.
My sense of panic was significantly less than hers. Maybe it was the soap in my eyes, or perhaps it was the memories of past 'intruder alerts'- (Keri: Honey, there's someone in the house. Go out there and check it out. ME: Isn't that what we have the dog for? Let's wake him up and send him out.)- but I was really more concerned with making sure I got the soap out of my nooks and crannies (I hate soap in my crannies) than I was of burglar hunting. But, recognizing the need to be the man (albeit grossly under-dressed) of the house, I cut short the theme from Laverne and Shirley and threw shorts over my wet body. I walked through the perimeter, shorts dripping and leaving wet footprints in the carpet, to be greeted by Keri, who immediately threw me in front of her in the hallway.
"He's in the garage," she whispered frantically. "There was a huge crash, and I think he's trying to break in the door."
I made it to the dining room. Keri was long gone. I saw before me three teenagers in various stages of hilarity, stalking through the room with butter knives, wooden spoons and what I think was a chiselled-down dog bone, securing their own perimeter and peaking out the window.
"There was a huge crash from the garage," came a voice of teenage wisdom, at which point they resumed giggling and crept in line behind me. Now, granted, I'm not a fan of being burglarized or pilfered from in any way. But their giggles caused me to worry even a bit less than I might have. We crept to the garage door. I readied my fist - why? I thought it seemed appropriate. I eased the door open and reached my hand into the garage to turn on the light.
Peeking into the garage, I witnessed a sight almost too horrible to mention. The shelf had collapsed, and there in front of me was strewn tools and other implements of destruction across the garage floor. Ultimately, the little box with the dozen compartments to hold nails and screws and such had fallen, and there were thousands of nails and screws and such all over the garage floor. It seemed like they lined themselves up all around the car tires too.
I would rather have had the burglar.
Theoretically, I guess, that was a false alarm. Thank God we weren't burglarized. The flat tire I got later that week from a nail in the tube was nothing compared to losing something of real value, like the laptop or the Magic Bullet. But there was, I must admit, a true sense of relief at not having to worry about being burglarized.
And recently our house was blessed with another false alarm. (Well, a couple actually if you count the keys we found (that we thought were lost) in - of all places - the bottom of Keri's purse.) But in order to describe this 'near miss', I must warn you that I'm going to be describing things that are almost too horrible, too grotesque to mention in polite conversation (which, of course, I have very little of.) I'll be delving into the deepest, most forlorn depths of the human psyche to relate a tale so utterly devastating you might not recover after reading it.
The sound from the TV went out a couple days ago.
The amount of panic that permeated the house was staggering. Panic on multiple levels and of extraordinary degrees.
"Why did the sound have to go out?!?"
"My God! Did you try turning it all the way up???"
"WHAT ABOUT THE MUTE BUTTON!?! FOR GOD'S SAKE SOMEBODY HIT THE MUTE BUTTON!!!!!"
"When are we getting a new TV? Will it be HD? Can I have the new TV in my room and use the old one out here?"
I must admit, when I first found out the sound didn't work, I was a little disconcerted as well. "I guess I'll have to watch the World Cup games without the cheesy commentary..." But, after several moments of reflective introspection, I began to think of just all the possibilities presented by a television-free household. Conversation. Music. Dinners at the table. Wow. That would be old school.
When Keri found out, she seemed to share my momentary glimpse of what could be. Then we looked at each other, rolled that bad boy away from the wall, and unplugged it to hopefully use the magical "reset" feature that worked several times in the past. (What the hell happens when you unplug the thing anyway? Do the magic TV gnomes have instant access to slip into the casing and rewire things?)
And, of course, we immediately got in the car and headed to Best Buy.
"Well, I suppose we should just go look and see how much we're gonna be lookin' at, I suppose."
We scoured the walls of flat screens before us and each uttered the same phrase at the same time: "These things are freakin' expensive." Holy crap, it's been awhile since we bought a new TV. It felt more like we were buying a car. Do the guys in blue shirts take you into the back room, where you're expected to haggle a little, and they go to their boss and bring you back a counter offer scribbled on a napkin?
After several minutes of listening to some guy talk about screens, and calibration, and pixillation, and I believe something about plaster of paris, my brain began to hurt and I faked a leg cramp. (Actually I had a real leg cramp earlier that day from dehydrating after spending several hours in the overheated garage on the hottest day of the year fixing the shelf that collapsed during the last burglary attempt.) Keri and I decided we'd at least figure out what size TV we could get by with. We already agreed on the first level of the purchase: We couldn't afford any of them, and would the kids notice if we replaced the TV with a toaster, which we both agreed, we could afford. So we walked further away from the wall and decided how far we usually sat from the TV, which was about five feet. Hell, from that distance we can get the tiniest screen they had up there, which the Best Buy scalliwags had hidden around the corner, nearest the warehouse and sandwiched between some models that had probably been around to receive the broadcast of the first lunar landings.
We decided that if we put some artwork around it, it really wouldn't look that small. And if we used the right color scheme, it would really make it 'pop.' So we spent the night in the living room, listening to music and reading, each of us wishing the TV had sound. I had moments of nostalgia and longing for all those hobbies I've been wanting to take up: model training, whittling, dog training. Eh, but let's face it. Those things are better when you do them in front of the TV.
And when I walked out of the bedroom the next morning, and I saw the teenager on the couch, and I heard the guy from Sportcenter discussing the overpaid NBA player, and I asked incredulously if the sound was coming from the TV, and he said, "uh, what do you think?" - well, I knew my hopes of learning to whittle would never progress beyond a sharp point on a stick.
For the sound had returned to the TV that day. And, oh, what a grand day it is indeed. And thank God for another false alarm.
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