A Tale of Heroic Valor on Basically Nobody's Part

It was a very cold night in Fallbrook, roughly 20 degrees. This was enough to make the stairs of the hot tub freeze over so when you tried to get in you slipped off and lay prostrate on the grass moaning and shivering in your bathing suit which quite frankly, does not cover much at all.

Anyway.

When it gets cold, we turn on the heater. Obviously. For most people, this is is normal. However, our house was built in the 40's pre-WW2, meaning that we can only get hot water at certian times of the day, can only have so many lights on at one time, and have to pray and cross your fingers if you want the heater on. When it is on, it makes dreadful bangs and moans like a giant flailing dying animal thrashing agaisnt the walls of the house in agony. Sometimes.

So when I was snug in my bed at 4 in the morning, toasty from many layers of synthetic fleece and wool, and I heard a bang I figured was the heater. It persisted. I realized that the heater usually is not so good with keeping time and rythym, as this mysterious sound was. So I went out into the living room, and there banging on the door like his life depended on it, was a very bearlike man. he was jiggling the handle and screaming with a very angry look on his face.

"What do you want?" I sqeaked through the door.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!"

This was the point in which i slid over the hardwood floory to my parent's bedroom. My dad shot out of bed like a bullet which was really funny to watch because he ran into a wall which he thought was the door, grabbed an umbrella, and went to the back door holding the Marimekko umbrella like a field hockey stick.

"Wrong door, Dad."

So he went to the front door and started yelling at the guy who was still there looking angry and obviously plastered as he didn't make eye contact and was stumbling. So my dad screamed. then the guy screamed. Then they both screamed. At this point I sat down on a throw pillow in the dark and laughed, enjoying the show. My mom called the police.

A few minutes later, the police showed up. There is nothing more beautiful that the flashing blue and red lights piercing the darkness on a winter's night. I wish i could say this was the first time a sqad car hasbeen on our property. The guy was running around our front lawn screaming when they took him away.

It was at that point that I realized my neighbor, Eric, was having one of his parties. He does this almost every weekend. Sometimes there's noise, but most of the time it dosn't bother me. usually we find used condoms and beer bottle on our lawn, but not crazed drunk guys calling me Dave, trying to break into our house.

The next morning, I was lingering near the front door with some very strong coffee in my Norway mug before work, when I noticed that his car keys were jammed in the lock on our door. Poor drunk bastard.

I threw them in the flowerbed. No one disrupts my sleep and gets away with it.