Locked My Boy In The House

          Locked My Boy In The House

I lost this post five months ago and just found it. And it's a good one damnit. I know it's long, and I know bloggers don't like to read anything that lasts over three blinks of the eye. But too bad, I like this one. How about this. Read a third of the post each day for three consecutive days, then it won't be so painful.

Me and the boy were lounging around our new rental house the day after the big move. With the house in disarray and nothing put away, I had just finished setting up the tv on the floor and had sat down with Mr Pants so he could veg out while I manipulated Lilly’s disfigured body on the latest pregnancy photo sessions when the door bell rang. Then the ringer of the bell pounded on the glass as if my bell wasn’t loud enough to wake a slumbering baby all ready. It was the gas man, come to transfer the gas service to my name.

I swung the door open and stepped outside as he was stepping off the porch and turned to ask me, “Hey is there a dog in back, I gotta check the meter?”

As the door slowly creaked closed by itself then clicked shut behind me I said, “No, no the dog isn’t here right now.”

“All right, thanks, I’m gonna go around and check the meter.”

As he headed off for the side gate I spun around in my socks to go back inside, only to discover that the door knob refused to turn in my cold grasp. This isn’t good. This is down right bad. “Oh shit. Are you freekin kidding me…”

Just the day before as both of our families were there helping unpack boxes Lilly and I were complaining about that very same door knob. We didn’t like that it was one of those old style knobs that when it is locked, it still opens from the inside, but remains locked from the outside. “I swear I’m going to lock myself out of the house with this dam knob,” I had told her as she nodded in agreement.

After twisting the brass right off the knob in hopes of it miraculously opening I spun around and placed my hands on my hips while staring at the street in deep contemplation of what I should do. Ahah, I know, I thought as I spun back around to make double sure that the door wasn’t really unlocked and I had just not turned it hard enough. Nope, still locked.

I peeked through the window to make sure my boy was still alive just as the gas man came bounding around the corner and said, “Hey man, there’s a dog back there.”

I shot him a glance and responded softly, almost to myself as my mind was now on how to get back inside to my 19 month old son, “Uhm…..oh.”

I turned to the front living room windows in hopes of one of them being unlocked. As I began trying to frantically pry out the screen with my finger nails the gas mans voice reached my ear again, “Yo, you said there wasn’t a dog back there….”

I cut him off, “Man I locked myself out.”

He repeated, “There’s a dog in the back yard, and I have to check the meter.”

All I could hear was my own voice running over and over in my head, it was telling me that my boy was going to get into the fridge and dump all the juice and milk all over the floor, it was telling me that he was going to start climbing the Himalayan peaks of heavy moving boxes precariously stacked throughout the house and cause an avalanche on himself, it was telling me that he was going to use the contents of the cat box as play-doh……. What is this guy saying about some gassy dog over there?

After cranking and twisting the ancient screen out of it’s place Mr Pants saw me through the window and ran over to yell at me for not taking him outside. He climbed onto a box and had his face smashed up against the window as I saw his mouth moving and his arm outstretched pointing at the door, just as I was trying to pry the window open, and the gas man yelled over at me again, “Hey can you do something about that dog.”

“Hey! I locked myself out and my baby is inside by himself,” I told him without looking over. Stepping over the screen on the ground I moved on to the next window. Then my boy began yelling at me through the glass. He was saying something threatening about wanting to torture my cat if I didn’t open the door to let him out…..

“Man…” The gas man tried to reach me again.

“Dude, I don’t give a shit about the dumb dog! Deal with it yourself,” I yelled at him as I worked at finding entry into the house. After checking half a dozen windows all the way around the house, only to find them all locked, I gave up on breaking and entering. I walked back out to the front and saw the gas man sitting in his car over the sidewalk. I went to his open window and said, “Hey sorry about the dog. The owner lives in the back house and he told me that he always takes his dog to work with him, so I didn’t think the dog was there, but I guess he lied to use to get us to rent the house. But hey, do you have a phone I could….”

“No.”

“…my baby is locked inside by himself. I need to call my wife to….” As I was talking I saw the edge of his phone sticking out from under a stack of papers on the passenger seat. I eyed the phone then eyed him as he quickly spit out, “Sorry dude, I don’t have a phone you can use.”

“Well then what good are you…,” I said with venom as I walked away, and towards the neighbors house.

I hadn’t met any of my new neighbors yet. I supposed that this would be as good of a time as any to get acquainted. As I knocked on their open door I was staring a huge black bubbled security camera in the eye drilled to the wall where the door bell should have been. Hmmmm, must be a safe neighborhood with all this surveillance going on. Someone answered the door and I starting introducing myself, “Hi I’m you new neighbor….”

“Oh, I don’t live here.” She replied.

“Oh, well are the owners here?”

“Nope.”

“Oh, okay then. Well anyway, I locked myself out of my house, and my baby is inside by himself wreaking havoc on my cat, can I use the phone?” She handed me her cell phone so I called my wife and left her a frantic message, something to the effect of wanting her to get her ass out of whatever insurance meeting she was in and fly back home so I could save our son from imminent death, or the cat, whichever the case may be, or whichever came first. “Allright, thanks for the phone. Bye.”

Who knows how long it would take her to get that message. Luckily we still live close to her work, being only three miles. So now I just wait, and watch the boy through the window. I pulled up one of my porch chairs and planted myself in front of the living room windows, non-effectively baby-sitting my boy from the porch.

And all he had to do was turn the knob. Like I said, the door is always unlocked from the inside. If he just knew how to turn that dam door knob, the dorr would have opened. Funny thing is that a few weeks later I could hardly keep him from turning the knob and running outside all day long.

Well, after he yelled at me through the window again for five minutes he went back to finish watching Star Wars on the tube. He actually sat on the couch and pulled the blanket up. Wow, now just stay right there and don’t move for a while. Dam, the movie ended. No….no buddy, don’t grab the crayons. Hey, hey stop coloring the tv. No it’s already in color. He colored long enough to give the screen a nice wax job. Okay good, do something else now. Hey, where are you going…. He disappeared into the unknown depths of the house to do who knows what. I ran around to the side window to follow his path of destruction. Hey, leave the cat alone buddy, she doesn’t need any crayons. Yeah, yeah just……hey don’t hit her on the head. Dude, stop yanking her tail like…. The cat was effectively freaked out and took off for the back bedroom. I had to run all the way around the front to get to the backyard where the bedroom window would be. Dam, where did he go. Allright, back to the front, I’ll just check the kitchen on the way. Really kid, you had to yank the dishes off the sink. Lilly likes to layout the clean dishes to dry on a towel. I keep telling her that he can reach the towel hanging over the edge of the sink, and likes to yank on it. As it appears he just did in hopes of reaching his milk which I set by it. Come on dude, really. The dishes. Oh come on, stop crying, it’s all right.

“Look, oooh oooooh look over there.” I pointed behind him through the window towards the living room. Usually when I point and say something he knows, he will go running to check it out. “Go get momma, look mommas home.” He sniffed back his tears and ran into the other room yelling ‘momma‘ as he went.

When I got back to the front window he was smothering his face against the window, making streak marks with his tongue. “Sorry buddy, I don’t know what to tell you. Just don’t move from…..” I was begging him as he headed off back to sit with his face planted in front of the tv. He started smearing his sippy cup full of milk against the screen, adding milk to the multi-colored wax streaks.

Well, what could I do. Whatever he did in there was completely out of my hands. Unless something catastrophic happened, I would just sit back and watch in horrific anticipation of just that, something horrific happening. Of course, chances were that he would be fine. If he got hurt I could easily bash a window in or kick through the front door jamb, but until I had to, I didn’t want to spend money on self-inflicted house damage. So I pulled up the patio chair and started sifting through the mail, turning around to check on him every couple of minutes. He actually sat back down on the couch and started playing with a stack of books. Thank Jah for that.

Alas, fifteen minutes later Lilly pulled up. “Hey, where’s my son.”

“Uh, well I told you he’s locked inside…”

“Uhm, I didn’t get that part of the message. What do you mean he’s inside!”

“Well, he’s in there all by his lonesome.”

“Really! Reaaaaaalllllllly! WHAT!”