My co-workers and I always share Thursday lunch. It was a suggestion made by us in upper management. Julie, Piper and myself were brainstorming ways that would pull our already close knit group of workers even closer. And I really do work with a great group of people, with the exception of my secretary, Nanette. So, one of us (it was probably Julie, she is the perky one) decided that we should ask everyone if they wanted to engage in Thursday Potluck lunch. Everyone (with the exception of one person...want to wager a guess?) thought it was a great idea.
So...every Thursday we take turns bringing either 1) paper plates, plastic cutlery (or the real thing if you don't mind being the washer afterwards) 2) sandwiches or a main lunch dish...nothing too fancy, 3) a salad or chips, etc. 4) a dessert or 5) being just a guest and bringing nothing but your appetite. Everyone supplies their own drinks. And the rule is NOTHING TOO EXPENSIVE OR FANCY PANTS. We don't want to turn this into a competition. And some of us (me) don't enjoy cooking that much.
It was my turn to bring dessert today, so I brought cupcakes from this incredible french bakery that I found.
Nanette called in sick (I admit that when I heard her nasally voice on voice mail, I went into Julie's office and said, "Let's get this party started!"), so it was just
Piper, Julie and Maria: big ass bosses
Milagros: nurse
Charity: office manager
Corona: janitor
Kim and Brenda: long suffering secretaries who work at the front desk with Nanette
Ernesto: the doorman at our building
Each week, five of us are on, five off. Today, Piper brought cutlery, Charity brought homemade chicken salad sandwiches, Kim brought a fruit salad and I brought those delish cuppy cakes.
We all talked like magpies, even the men. And sometimes they are the worst.
But we all got to talking about something that scared the hell out of us.
Milagros spoke of the time that she was out jogging in the early morning and thought she was being followed.
Corona spoke of a man with road rage who jumped out of his car at a red light and came running at his car with a bat screaming, "Stop riding my ass, motherfucker!" This was when he had only been in America for a few months and barely knew English. He thought the man was accusing of him making love to his wife.
Kim spoke of the time her son fell down the basement steps and hit his head. She talked a lot about the incredible blood flow until we reminded her that we were eating, dude.
When it came to my turn, I had my story ready. It was close at hand. It happened when Liv was a baby. I had just moved into our present home and because it is ancient, it had no central air conditioning. I remembered a/c units from college, but didn't know much. At any rate, the one in my bedroom seemed pretty lackadaisical. So, I got out the yellow pages and called the first place I found that worked on window units. When the doorbell rang, I put Liv in her playpen (baby jail) and answered the door. There was this greasy haired man in a pair of jeans and a filthy work shirt. He didn't have a badge or anything.
Stupidly, I said,"Are you the air conditioner repair guy?"
He nodded and held up a tool box. I let him in. WITHOUT checking for id.
I know. Stupid. Incredibly stupid.
I was walking towards Liv when I heard the door slam behind him and turned to see him swiftly locking the three deadbolts on my door. And then I happened to notice that there was no truck in my driveway. No van with the name of the heating and cooling company.
My heart was banging against my ribs and I was terrified. I had just let a killer/rapist into my home. And it was because I was a stupid idiot. I felt my mouth go dry and I tried to think but all that kept running through my head was, "Oh, my God...I can't let him hurt LIV!" I swallowed and tried to think. It's harder than you think. You know how you see all those horror movies and you can't believe that the woman ALWAYS goes down in the basement to check that noise? Or that she trips and falls? Or fights back like a little girl?
Well, that could have been me. I actually tripped over Liv's bouncy chair and almost fell. And when the guy walked towards me, I gave out a strangled, very squeaky half scream.
He held up his hands.
"Hey, now," he said, not unkindly. "I just wanted to make sure you hadn't hurt yourself."
And you know the rest of the story. It was the heating/cooling guy. He had parked in front of my house instead of in the driveway. When I asked him about it later when my teeth weren't rattling, he told me that it was a company rule: DO NOT park in customer's driveways.
In short, he fixed the unit. Put coolant or something in it. And yes, he was kind of gross smelling and looking and that whole exposing butt thing that seems to come with repair men? He did that when he bent over to grasp a wrench or something.
It turned out fine.
I DO think it was ODD that he put my deadbolts on, but I never asked him about it. I should have. I didn't. His teeth were this brownish yellow that disgusted me a little bit, but he wasn't my dentist. He was my repair guy and he did his job. Well.
And okay, as he was leaving, he did ask me if I had myself an um...man. And I lied my head off and said that I sure did!
"Too bad!" he said, gaily. "I was gonna tell ya that I'd love to buy ya a brew sometime."
I smiled and shrugged. He left soon after with my check for 50 bucks.
I do think he was unprofessional. But...he didn't rape and kill me.
And I have NEVER done something so stupid again. I could have been a statistic. The kind you read about and wonder how on earth a woman living alone could be so stupid as to get herself and her baby killed.
So...I've been thinking about it and I really, really want to hear YOUR scary story.
Let's sit by this here camp fire and have some s'mores. Who wants to go first?
9 comments:
Regarding the deadbolts: the Paragons of Virtue who clean my home every week are always locked up tight inside, if and when I come home in the middle of the day. Locking up behind you must be an ingrained habit. (Workmen avoid parking in driveways as their trucks might leak oil and then homeowners get upset).
When I was 16 I used to babysit for this boy names Michael. Part of my job was to teach this 4 year old how to swim in the pool of the condo's that his parents resided in across from the beach.
There was this little old man probably in his mid 70's that used to sit outside and watch as I gave the kid his lessons every day before lunch.
It was a common pool a court yard kinda deal. Sometimes most times he'd give Michael a treat for doing a good job at the end of his lesson.
As the summer progressed I became friendly with many of the residence as well as the little man so when one day he forgot the treat and asked us to follow him into the apartment I didn't blink.
That was until he closed the door and slammed me up against the wall and attempted to molest me. I was a kid in a pretty small 2 piece bathing suit. Talk about being scared shitless!!
Thank goodness my dad was a cop and taught me well. I kneed that dirty old prick with all i had in his balls and he went down like a ton of bricks.
Grabbed the kid and locked ourselves in the kids apartment. When the mom came home I quit and never went back!
I have so many, really. It would require a blog post. Let's just say I was a pretty crazy teen, and I'm lucky to be alive like, 20 times over.
I've picked up a hitchhiker exactly ONE time in my entire life, and it turned out to be a guy who'd just gotten released from jail. As I dropped him off, he told me to be careful who I picked up from then on.
I don't think I ever did tell my mother that story.
I think my scariest "stranger danger" moment happened in my own home. Over a series of weeks, or even months no less.
One fall I moved into an old rental house. It was creaked and groaned and made all manner of strange old house noises. As cooler temperature set it I began to hear a scratching sound most every night. I thought perhaps it was bushes against the side of the house; squirrels in the attic (that I couldn't access;) or even mice in the walls. I was jittery and jumpy and refused to admit I was scared by actually checking it out. I told myself to suck it up, put on my big girl panties and quit being a scaredy cat and that's what I did, or tried to do, as I laid in bed every night trying to figure out what that scratching noise was.
That winter I awoke one morning to several inches of snow. And big, man-sized footprints leading away from my house. Come to find out, there had been a homeless man staying in the crawlspace under my house every night! He'd made himself a right cozy life under there, complete with a makeshift bed and fire.
While I was at work that day the policeman was kind enough to lock up the crawlspace entrance for me. I didn't sleep well for months, worried that the man who had never actually bothered me would be pissed at me for evicting him and want revenge.
Um, my life must be pretty safe, no such happenings.
So this is what scared the hell out of me.
One early summer night Damie and I were sound asleep. It was one of those nights were the breeze coming in the window was exactly the right temperature, and you were as snug as a bug in a rug.
Well at some point in the night I awoke to the sound of a police car driving down the street telling everyone that "this is an emergency, please close and lock all doors and windows immediately". This was repeated over and over. I woke Damie up, told her what I heard and made her get out of bed and lock all the doors and windows (my ass was way too scared to put a foot on the ground let alone walk all over the house). Damie came back to the bedroom and we were both scared as shit.
Damie decided to give the cops a call and see what was up. Damie explained to the disbatcher what we had heard, and she told her that nothing like that was going on anywhere.
It turns out I was dreaming when I heard the announcement.
It did scare us to death, but then I was scared that Damie was going to kill me with her bare hands!!
When I was a teenager, I walked to the bus stop because I needed to pick up my paycheck. To get there, I had to walk underneath the train tracks and thru a viaduct, which was dark and secluded. I did this with earphones on and my head down. Dumb I know.
There was a guy who had 6 inches and 75 lbs on me who was walking ahead of me. Before I knew it, he turned around quickly, had me in a bear hug and was dragging me back behind the stairs, punching and scratching the whole way. Needless to say, he won and I didn’t.
Luckily, a passerby saw me but he kept walking. So I figured that I needed to save myself because no one else was going to. Later I found out that he was just as afraid, so instead of confronting the guy, he found a campus security guard (we were on a large university campus) and alerted him to what was going on.
I was assaulted but it could have been much worse because this criminal had a history of violence and was escalating.
I got drugged in a bar once. I was already a few drinks in, feeling pretty good, when a man I had met once before bought me a drink. I was dumb enough to accept and drink it, not having watched it being prepared. It didn't take too long to affect me and I KNEW immediately that something was wrong. I had been talking to another fellow, whom I didn't know and kept telling him that I felt funny and had to find the 3 friends who I had arrived at the bar with. Luckily they found me and I left with them, unharmed, but it could have been so much worse...
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