TENNIS COURT
My next door neighbor has a tennis court in his backyard that is visible from my bathroom window. In summer, I sometimes look out the window and imagine a fierce tennis match taking place between two polished opponents. I welcome this bit of excitement happening in real time that I can watch, unabashed, for a solid five minutes before I have to lie back down again. But it never happens.
My wife and I have lived in this house for over five years and the only amount of activity on that tennis court has been your everyday squirrel chasing a nut and the weekly landscaper leaf-blowing the shit out of the concrete surface.
Before we bought this house, I casually asked the realtor to ask the seller if the neighbors ever use their tennis court. His reply: “No, they do not, nor will they ever.”
BURGLARY
When I was around ten years old, my family home got burglarized. My mother and sister were out somewhere, but my father, my brother, and I came home from Sears in time to hear that someone was in the house, more specifically, downstairs in the basement. We had just pulled in the driveway when my father noticed all the lights on inside the house. A licensed carrier, he immediately went for the pistol in his ankle holster. He told my brother and I to stay put inside the car. Then he cautiously entered the house.
Of course we didn’t listen to my father’s instructions and followed along soon after. The kitchen was trashed. And there was commotion heard from down in the basement. When I went downstairs—I’m not sure what my brother was doing at this point, perhaps whimpering in the corner somewhere—my father and the burglar were nowhere in sight.
Our was stuff strewn everywhere. I immediately rushed to the other part of the basement, where the bulked was, and saw that it was open, the backyard censor light illuminating the area outside. And so I was able to catch a glimpse of my father running through the snow away from the house. The rest of the story goes that he chased the burglar a ways up the street before eventually losing sight of him. However, if you ask my father in the present day if this ever happened, he’ll say that it never did, and that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Did my father really chase a burglar almost a quarter mile up the road with a firearm in his hand? I remember that night and I remember it well. Perhaps Dateline might properly investigate the events of that evening so I can know the real facts of this mysterious cold case.
My next door neighbor has a tennis court in his backyard that is visible from my bathroom window. In summer, I sometimes look out the window and imagine a fierce tennis match taking place between two polished opponents. I welcome this bit of excitement happening in real time that I can watch, unabashed, for a solid five minutes before I have to lie back down again. But it never happens.
My wife and I have lived in this house for over five years and the only amount of activity on that tennis court has been your everyday squirrel chasing a nut and the weekly landscaper leaf-blowing the shit out of the concrete surface.
Before we bought this house, I casually asked the realtor to ask the seller if the neighbors ever use their tennis court. His reply: “No, they do not, nor will they ever.”
BURGLARY
When I was around ten years old, my family home got burglarized. My mother and sister were out somewhere, but my father, my brother, and I came home from Sears in time to hear that someone was in the house, more specifically, downstairs in the basement. We had just pulled in the driveway when my father noticed all the lights on inside the house. A licensed carrier, he immediately went for the pistol in his ankle holster. He told my brother and I to stay put inside the car. Then he cautiously entered the house.
Of course we didn’t listen to my father’s instructions and followed along soon after. The kitchen was trashed. And there was commotion heard from down in the basement. When I went downstairs—I’m not sure what my brother was doing at this point, perhaps whimpering in the corner somewhere—my father and the burglar were nowhere in sight.
Our was stuff strewn everywhere. I immediately rushed to the other part of the basement, where the bulked was, and saw that it was open, the backyard censor light illuminating the area outside. And so I was able to catch a glimpse of my father running through the snow away from the house. The rest of the story goes that he chased the burglar a ways up the street before eventually losing sight of him. However, if you ask my father in the present day if this ever happened, he’ll say that it never did, and that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Did my father really chase a burglar almost a quarter mile up the road with a firearm in his hand? I remember that night and I remember it well. Perhaps Dateline might properly investigate the events of that evening so I can know the real facts of this mysterious cold case.