An Uninvited Guest

So this Saturday, I'm stumbling around in a lack-of-sleep stupor because we had more Friday night fun. You'll recall that last Friday we dealt with snoring beyond our wall that would have woke the dead (meaning it did wake up Michael). This time, we had a drunk walk right into our house. So in the past 6 months, our home has been breached twice by strangers - the first time in St. Kitts and the other here. Nifty.

I am a very light sleeper. I can even tell when Michael's breathing changes. I sort of snooze through the night. Sure I'm exhausted all the time, but it's worked out a couple of times; like this last night. At 2 a.m. this morning, when I heard someone sneaking up the stairs and then heard our door knob jiggle, I thought - Oh no, not again. Two weekends in a row (three really)? %$*!  I opened my eyes and was dumbfounded when someone walked right past our bedroom's sliding doors. Our bedroom has two entrances: a door on the "real" wall, leading into the living room; and a "fake" wall made of two sliding doors that lead to the entry hallway. The doors were slightly open, and I watched a man walk toward the living room. Crap.

I shoved Michael hard and told him someone was inside the house, and then asked really loud "Can I help you?" to let the guy know he was not alone (and to sound as stupid as those people do in scary movies). He stopped where he was, and Michael confronted him in the hallway. Now Michael used to be known as Mole because he used to do this all the time in college. We lived in a unisex dorm, with wings dedicated to guys or gals. This cute guy, who laughed and smiled all the time, would appear on our floor at odd hours of the night (or day) and just pass out in someone's room. No one had any idea who he was or if he even lived on our floor. Who was that guy? We'd say he was like a mole and the name stuck. I didn't know Michael's name for 3 years, I'm not kidding (we weren't a couple then). It wasn't until I graduated and was leaving that I finally asked him what it was. Ok, so what the heck does this have to do with anything?

Well, Michael, sympathetic to what could be this guy's plight, figured he'd give him the benefit of the doubt. Instead of just shooting him in the head for trespassing, no questions asked, which seems to be the thing to do these days, he asked the guy if he was in the wrong apartment. We assumed the man, reeking of alcohol, meant to go to our neighbor's, and we expected him to sheepishly apologize, stumble to the next door, and then keep us up all night snoring again. No harm done. But that's not what happened.

He looked surprised, put his hands up, and told Michael he could frisk him. "No, seriously man, search me." Michael was stumped. The guy had his work boots off and dangling from his hands, and stayed like that. He headed toward the door, but wouldn't leave. He kept saying he was "allowed to" stay, and Michael kept talking to him like he was a perfectly normal human being. I could see that the guy was not going to leave and that he was getting a little testy, so grabbed the phone, blocked him off at the other entrance, and told him to get out before he got himself arrested. I started thinking about all the things that could go wrong here, but was thankful when he walked to the other side of the threshold. I slammed the door in his face, LOCKED it, and then we listened to him tell us that "We should go to school," "We were stupid," and "He could do whatever he wanted." Hmmm.

When he didn't seem to want to move on, and was starting to sound a little more threatening, we called the police. First the dispatcher said "I hate to say this, but it happens all the time"; and then the two officers, who showed up promptly but not fast enough to get the guy, said the same thing. They didn't say it flippantly, just matter-of-factly. So drunks wandering into people's homes is a common occurrence here. Good to know. Since violent crime isn't prevalent in Key West, I'm guessing the outcome is usually the same - the guy eventually bumbles off into the night. I'd prefer it didn't happen to us again though.

The obvious question is why wasn't our door locked? Well, first of all, there is an outer door to the place that we thought would act as a deterrent. Second, our main door usually just stays locked on its own, so it's not something we think about all that often. Sometimes though, the mechanism gets turned enough that it unlocks, and apparently that happened last night. We will be more vigilant, I can assure you.

Needless to say, I didn't even snooze much after that. No comment about Michael.

On a completely different note, I am amazed to see that The Babbling Conch has accumulated over 10,000 hits already. My old blog, Island Babble, just cleared 100,000 (note it's been taken over, and reformatted, by someone else since August 2012). That's pretty cool, but you people are really quiet. Feel free to comment and email so I don't feel like I'm talking to myself. It took awhile for my shy lurkers to come out of the woodwork in St. Kitts, but I appreciated it when they did and have forged some unexpected friendships.

What are we doing this weekend? Not sure. It got cold again. A wicked-looking cold front came through the other day, and the brisk wind makes your nose run. I haven't decided if I'll be watching the Super Bowl at a bar or not. Just about every bar here is having some kind of party, but I'm not really feeling it. Last year, we watched it from our friend's beach bar. Our feet were in the sand, we were drinking cheap beer, and we were laughing at commercials and cheering on teams while it was all projected onto a white-sheet-turned-screen right on the beach with the Caribbean Sea as a backdrop. It's hard to top that.


The sky is the clearest blue today though and humidity is way down, so we will find something to do to get out and about.