I realize that I haven’t blogged lately, not since I was in Winnipeg for training last week, but it’s been hectic, and there have been some… complications at work. Another story for another time, I suppose. I have something disturbing to talk about right now.
Last night, I was doing deliveries at the WP. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Instead of using Eugene’s car (he currently has my car in Winnipeg because of the low mileage per gallon), I was using my parents’ van, an old 1991 Ford Aerostar XL. Also nothing out of the ordinary there. One particular delivery went to Minago Bay, one of the residential streets in the new trailer court. Unfortunately, since the last two huge snowfalls we had this past month, the city has not been able to get their workforce to plow many of these smaller streets, mine included, and this one in particular. As a result, I got stuck trying to get into the street. Luckily, a passerby motorist saw my plight and helped push me out. However, it was my fault in the first place for trying to turn into the street where the snow drift was the heaviest. So, I turned into the street again using the worn out path and made it to the delivery destination. However, on my way out, I got stuck yet again. The snow was unbelievably soft and powdery, and it all sat on top of a frozen ice layer. Fun. I thought I could dig my way out, so I unlocked the sliding door and pulled out a shovel that Dad kept in the back for emergencies. Dig, dig, dig. It still did me no good.
The customer I delivered to saw my plight (and most likely heard me gunning the engine) and rushed out to help give me a push, but that got nowhere. We switched roles and I got out and pushed – I almost strained my back, but he got out and circled around Minago and back over on to Campbell, where the road was worn down better. I thanked him and went on my merry way to the next delivery (the bastard pretty much sent his crazy Husky after me for being late). By the time I got back to the restaurant, I was exhausted from all the shoveling and pushing I had to do, so I stumbled inside and plopped down on the first chair I could find. I let Dad do the next delivery so that I could gather my wits about me, and in due time, we finished up the last few pick-up orders and closed up shop. Dad and AM left in the van first, and Mom and I followed them in Eugene’s car. Once again, nothing out of the ordinary there.
At approximately 4:00 AM in the morning, I awoke to the sound of our house alarm klaxon blaring away. I lurched out of bed and noticed that everybody was still asleep. Figures. I trudged downstairs and deactivated the alarm system, cursing the damn system for malfunctioning at a time like this, and right when my shoulder was starting to ache from all the overexertion during deliveries earlier. I checked the alarm panel and noticed that instead of complaining about the front door (which likes to trip the alarm at night every winter), it was reporting that the door leading to the garage was the cause. ‘Well, isn’t that strange,’ I mused to myself. I opened the door and checked the alarm sensors to see if everything was still in place. No issues there. The garage door was still closed, so it couldn’t have been an intruder. I shook my head and decided to deal with it in the morning, since alarm security would be calling us any minute now. I shut the door and turned the alarm system back on. I wearily trudged back upstairs to my room and attempted to go back to sleep, all the while wondering what would really happen if somebody broke into our house, and what actions I would take to defend the house. After running through a few scenarios in my head, I heard some kind of a scraping sound. Was that coming from outside?
I headed over to the bathroom and looked down at the side of the house. I didn’t see anything. I went back to my room and heard the scraping noise again. I started to wonder if those noises were related to our alarm system tripping out earlier. Well, like it says on the back cover of the Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, I decided to stay calm and
went to wake Dad up. I explained to him what had happened about 20 minutes before, and that’s when we heard the knocking. It was coming from downstairs. We went and checked the front door, but nobody was outside the door. The knocking came again, over from the other side of the house. I suggested that perhaps it was coming from the laundry room door, which leads outside, but we don’t have any steps that allows somebody to walk in easily. As we were about to approach the door, we heard the knocking again, and it distinctly came from the door that led to the garage.
The door that I opened and checked earlier.
Cautiously, we turned on the light in the room and opened the garage door. There was a caucasian boy standing there, all bundled up in winter gear, in our garage. He looked like he was in his late teens, and he smelled of some really bad alcohol. Mom and AM had woken up and were now watching the scene unfold in apprehension.
“What are you doing in our garage? How did you get in here?” Dad asked.
“I don’t know,” the kid replied. “I woke up in here.”
“Whereabouts in here?” I asked.
“In that van there,” came the reply.
Dad promptly opened the garage door and let the guy out. I couldn’t help but shake my head. I asked Dad and AM if they noticed anything was amiss on their way home from the WP. AM commented that before they entered the van, there was a teenage boy wandering our parking lot, obviously looking for somebody, and smelling of alcohol. When they got into the van, she noticed that she could smell the alcohol from inside. On the way home, she also noticed that the sliding door was rattling like it wasn’t closed shut properly. Each time she voiced these observations out loud, Dad just shrugged it off as usual (he’s so lethargic in his old age).
“So, let me get this straight,” I said in disbelief. “This guy drunkenly crawled into our van while we were closing up the restaurant, you drove him home while he was sleeping in the back seat, and he just woke up now?”
Ascension gave way to pointing out how it may have happened. After all the exertion during my last delivery of the night, I didn’t lock the doors, especially the sliding door. Dad also should have checked the back seat when obvious clues were slapping him and AM in the face.
Mom and AM were just relieved that this didn’t escalate into a home invasion case like three weeks ago when an Inco retiree had his home broken into which subsequently ended up with him getting shot to death.
So, what’s the moral of the story? Even though you think it might only happen in movies and television shows, check the freaking back seat of your car for any intruders or sleeping drunks before getting in and driving.
When I look back at this situation, I really have to laugh. It was such a stupid thing that happened, and it could have been a lot more serious, but it wasn’t, and we still learned our lesson. Also, if we had called the police, they probably would have been laughing about it at the lunchroom water cooler.
I’m thinking that since the guy slept in our Aerostar like it was a hotel, we should have charged him. Hehehe.
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