Picture it: Our house, yesterday afternoon.
My sister Mary and brother-in-law John have been visiting from New Jersey, their first time in Minnesota in many years. Mary and John and Jerry and Tom were upstairs in the dining room playing Mexican Train Game. John won the game (big surprise), then Mary came downstairs to the family room where my sister Joan and I were, for some unknown reason, watching on YouTube.com various and sundry versions of the song "Don't Leave Me This Way", my favorite 70s song (Which is the better version -- Thelma Houston or Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes?). We were watching a Julie Andrews version of it (seriously!) when Jerry came downstairs to go to the garage to get his briefcase out of his car.
Suddenly we heard Jerry calling from the garage, "Somebody come help me!" My sisters and I ran to the garage to find out what was wrong. There was a strange woman in Jerry's car! She was going through his briefcase, stealing checkbooks and who knows what else. John and Tom came running from upstairs. Jerry was screaming at this chick and making sure she didn't get away, then yelling at us to call 9-1-1. Joan got the new experience of calling 9-1-1 and being the one to say, "Get the cops over here right now! We have a burglar!"
The squad car was there in about 3 minutes and arrested her (the burglar, not Joan).
So what was this woman thinking, robbing a house that obviously had a lot of people in it, the game upstairs and the YouTube thing downstairs? Well, for one thing, both the front door and the back door were open to keep air flowing through the house and might have been the only open doors in the neighborhood. You see, soon after John and Mary arrived, the air-conditioning unit blew up, and it was getting kinda warm. So this wacko woman snuck (sneaked?) into the noisy house and slipped into the garage. After her ordeal of having Jerry screaming at her like a madman and my family members giving her looks that could kill, let's hope she has been scared straight and deterred from a life of crime.
Meanwhile, we are telling Mary and John this kind of stuff ordinarily never happens to us. We never guarantee live entertainment to our guests.
P.S.:
"Don't Leave Me This Way" -- Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes (lead singer, Teddy Pendergrass) -- http://youtube.com/watch?v=q5tqAIY-TzA
"Don't Leave Me This Way" -- Thelma Houston -- http://youtube.com/watch?v=VOY-s9iaJjU
7 comments:
haha.... how exciting!!!! I love crazy people!!!! this stuff never happends in Brainerd!!! :-)
A.P.
you need to get out of Brainerd, Aaron -- come back to the Cities! Think of the crazy people you used to meet on the bus!
I must live in Wobegon! My neighbor takes out my garbage if I forget and even brings in the trash cans. I can leave my garage door open all day with the house unlocked, I can sleep with my windows opened, and I have occasionally forgotten to close the garage door at night-with no incident. But then again, everyone knows I am charmed and have guardians watching over me.
same here! we've left our garage door open all night, accidentally, more than once, and it wouldn't occur to us to have to have the doors locked during the day when we are home. oh well. crazies can be anywhere, even Wobegon.. or Brainerd.
Picture it; Sicily, 1922.
God!!!! I still think about a few of the crazy people on the bus.... no thanks!!! :-) just a few random crazy drunk people up here... oh and maybe a few up by my cabin that have not come out of the woods in 10 years... but definatly a different kind of crazy!!! :-) talk to you soon!!
A.P.
Good words.
Post a Comment