Hiding in a closet for two hours isn’t as fun as it sounds

Have I ever told you the story about the time I hid in Ben’s roommate’s closet for two hours white knuckling a baseball bat? Anyone [pause], anyone remember...no? Because I’d hate to repeat myself and risk sounding like a nagger. A repeater is like a nagger, and no one likes a nagger, however, sometimes a nagger must repeatedly remind a certain somebody to buy lemons on his way home because the last time a certain somebody wasn’t nagged at, the nagger had to eat her hummus without a squeeze of lemon. The only thing worse than a nagger is a grumpy nagger who’s forced to eat Middle Eastern food without a squirt of citrus.

Maybe that’s the real crux of the Middle East conflict, lack of citrus on their falafels, because boy, a plate of baba ghanoush without a lemon wedge can make me cross. There. Problem solved. Hillary Clinton, you’re welcome.

Annnnyway, hiding for my life in the closet.

Back in our college days, Ben lived in a house with a couple of roommates. One afternoon, Ben and I were hanging out on his futon at his house watching Pearl Jam videos, when he got called into work. No matter, I’d wait there until he got back. About fifteen minutes after he’d left, I heard a knock at the front door. Neither of his roommates were home, so I went to answer the door myself. On the way to answering it, I peeked out the window to see if I recognized the car in the driveway. What I saw was a windowless, rusted-out, passenger van. Unrecognized.

I’m sure there are many perfectly lovely people who drive rusted-out, windowless, passenger vans, however, as a child of the seventies, I can tell you that every After-School-Special started out with one of those vans lurking down a neighborhood street and ended with the narrator warning us against helping a stranger find their ‘lost’ dog. I’ve lived my entire life walking three parking spaces out of my way just to avoid passing next to one of those After-School-Special vans. I was not going to open the door for some guy and his After-School-Special, passenger van, even if he did lose his puppy.

So, I turned around to go back to my Pearl Jam videos when I heard the knocking stop and the front door open. [Queue da-da-dum music.] FREAKIN FREAKED ME OUT. I ducked back into the bedroom. I needed to call for help, but the only phone upstairs was in the roommate’s room. I cracked open Ben’s door and looked out the hallway window to see if the van was still there. It was, and so were two men carrying the living room T.V. to their ‘After School Special’ van. At which moment, I thought I might lose control of my bowels. How great. Headline reads: Woman Found Clubbed On Head, Poops Her Pants.

Any moment now a couple of toothless guys in sleeveless, concert tee-shirts would be making their way up the stairs. Even so, I took a second to slip on my shoes because as far as I was concerned, this roommate’s bedroom was something of a portal of debauchery. Not to be judgey, but his nudist magazines and pink whip, left in plain view inside his bedroom doorway, screamed penicillin.

There were mounds of clothes and piles of lewdness in the roommate’s room, so I couldn’t find the phone. Also, I was panicked, and the horror movie soundtrack was blaring inside my eardrums at decibels that caused my equilibrium to act like a drunken kitten. I was lucky I could still put one contaminated foot in front of the other.

However, in all my rummaging I found a baseball bat. I grabbed it [carefully with two fingers - who knows where that thing had been], and hid in the closet. For two hours. Holding onto my bat and reconsidering my leftist stance on gun control. TWO HOURS!

Finally, I came to the conclusion I’d been hiding long enough. By now the burglars could have ordered a pizza, packed-up the whole downstairs into boxes, labeled the boxes, and loaded them into their van. I ran downstairs and called Ben.

“Ben, some guys in an After-School-Special, passenger van came into the house and stole the T.V.!”

“No one stole the T.V. My roommate sold it to a couple of his buddies. I told you that.”

Are you as annoyed as I was? Here I tell you about this whole, big, dramatic thing only to get to the end of the story and hand you a bowl wet noodles. I know. I wanted to punch him in his boys, too.

“No, I don’t remember! How about you remind me more than once...Hmm? You know, a little repeating yourself, over and over again, doesn’t hurt! In fact, sometimes a certain somebody can prevent a certain someone from hiding in a closet for two hours!”