Eight Minutes of Terror

Sunday was beautiful.  Warm, breezy, spring colors everywhere. We had gone for a long walk through the neighborhood and now we were relaxing.  I was enjoying a cold Molson Canadian (have I mentioned how much I like Canadians? Some other time, then). We had the front door open with the storm door closed and the cats were sunning themselves in the warmth through the storm door.  The whole time-change thing had made our heads fuzzy and gave everything a dreamlike quality.  It was just peaceful, you know?

Just as we were contemplating dinner the doorbell rang.  We haven't lived here long enough for "friends" to drop by, though this would have been the perfect time for someone to show up with a bag of weed and some fresh oysters or something.  It was that kind of day.  But no, it was a woman from across the street, with her three kids: a very cute girl about four, her older brother, about six, and some other child that was still small enough to hold.

She, the mom, we'll call her Neighbor-mom, wanted to talk about the proposed Conservation Overlay.  The Conservation Overlay would require homeowners to go through a review process before they could build or remodel.  Neighbor-mom wanted to know my stance on it and had a few points to cover with me before getting my opinion.

No sooner had she started speaking when her daughter sauntered in to our house - like she owned the place.

"Oh Katy, we can't just walk in to people's houses..." Neighbor-mom said, meekly.

I was a little taken aback, but neighbor-mom kept going, until her son piped up,

"Sir, can I come in to your house and pet your cats?"

Now I got why the little girl came in, she wanted to pet the cats.  And the little man here was so polite,

"Sure, you can come in the hall here and pet them, if they aren't too shy." I was confident the cats had long since retreated to their favorite hiding spots already. "I doubt you'll see them, though.  They are pretty timid..."

So Neighbor-mom is getting rolling, and I can't see the children any more.  Time is ticking by and I'm getting an uneasy feeling.

"Hey, we found your cats!" said the formerly polite little man, appearing from nowhere.

"Oh yeah? Where?" I thought, "Wow, maybe the cats aren't so shy..."

"Katy found them upstairs...IN YOUR BEDROOM."

Our closest friends haven't been in our bedroom.  Neither have either of our parents.  It is our bedroom.  Its not that we have a deep secret or anything.  No fully equipped dungeon, no pile of dirty laundry - real or figurative.  It is just that it is our bedroom.  And now some animal disguised as a cute four year old was tracking our pets through our bedroom... And their mother was doing nothing.

"Oh, Katy" was all she could muster.

"What the fuck?" Was what came to my mind. "OK, TIME FOR YOU TO GO" is what came out of my mouth.  I walked briskly to the bottom of the stairs. "THE CATS DON"T WANT TO SEE YOU TODAY, KATY."

Neighbor-mom sort of got a clue and started rounding them up.  Stuff about being more polite in others people's houses was coming out of her mouth as I was (gently, but firmly) pushing her son away from my COLLECTION OF MATCHBOOKS (They had invaded our space and were hitting the vulnerable spots...).

"Good luck on your remodel" I said, finally reaching the door.

"Yeah, well I just hoped to get your stance..." I didn't hear the rest of the sentence because I had closed and locked the door as soon as they had stepped across the threshold.

The whole thing took maybe eight minutes.  But it was one of the strangest eight minutes of my life.  Possibly the most frightening.

"Where's my beer?" was all I could say.