Weirdoes at the Gate
Thursday, August 24th, 2006The night after returning from my Vegas Shanghai, my buddies Hoat, Adam, and I enjoyed the sweltering July 3rd night conversing on my front porch. As usual, we talked about a multitude of mundane things: old army stories, dreams (as in the nighttime type), OCD, Vegas itself, and Israel.
Late into the night, past 2 a.m., a strange man suddenly appeared outside my front gate. He jiggled the handle as if to come in. When he was unsuccessful, he called out to us.
“Hey man, you got a light?” he asked. Hoat and I were smoking and honestly, caught off guard. The balls on the strange guy - asking three grown men in a strange neighborhood for a match in the middle of the night. I was speechless.
However, Hoat was not. “Excuse me sir, but this is a private conversation.”
“I got my own cigarettes, I just need a light.”
Holt reiterated. “Sir, this is a private conversation.”
The freak continued. “I know you got a light. I see you smoking”
Just then, the three dogs of the yard rushed up to him barking furiously on the other side of the gate. He stammered a bit in his gait, dismissed the dogs with a furious handshake downward, and walked off into the night.
This got me thinking about how many other weirdos wander around my house at all hours. I knew it happened, because I’ve seen them sauntering past in the bright of day. However, this is the first time I have seen it with my own eyes so brazenly.
Last night, past midnight, I heard the dogs barking again, especially my small dog who never barks at any thing besides a scrawny cat or stray dog in the far distance. I heard rapid fire, freaked out, unusually frenzied barking. I started looking out windows. I saw nothing through the first few. Then I looked out the front window and saw a silhouette, an unwavering shadow standing at the gate, peering over. I thought it was the motherfuckering bogeyman! This guy was standing motionless, staring down at the three barking dogs. So I open my door.
“Howdy!” I say to him.
He says nothing. He apparently had a bike in tow and silently starts pushing it away with him. I closed the front door and walked to the kitchen window and looked out. Just before leaving my view, he jumps on the bike and rides away awkwardly.
So I ask, is there anything more freaky than someone, some strange fucker, standing outside the gate outside your house? What if I didn’t have a gate? Makes me want to take up arms.
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On a side note, I wrote this whole post using voice recognition software and a microphone. Took me a while. Hopefully, I can get the computer/software and me to jive soon. As it is, I’m having to speak like Walter Cronkite to get it to recognize anything I say.