The Man of the House....

Prior to departing for southeast Asia for yet another tour, my father spent a few weeks giving me instructions on how to take care of things around the house while he was gone. He drilled into me, that from the moment he left, until he returned a year later, that I would be the "Man of the house".

It's a tough position for an 8th grader, and it was my second hitch! The first time I was "the man" was when I was in the 5th grade, back when my father had gone to southeast Asia for his second time. I tried to absorb everything he told me and to take my upcoming responsibilities seriously. I would have much rather preferred it if he would have suddenly told me that his orders had been cancelled, and that I could just resume being a kid for a few more years. Alas, that didn't happen.

I've already written about my hellish adventures in the public school system of Goldsboro, NC back in the early '70's. And I did mention the little suburb that I once lived in there. Up until the few months, prior to my father's return, I had always thought we lived in a pretty safe and secure neighborhood. Over a course of about three weeks though, my opinion on the matter changed dramatically.

It was late one Friday night, it was fall, and the temperatures were starting to drop at night. My mom, most unusually, had decided to keep some of the windows open overnight to allow the cool fresh air to enter the house. As usual on Friday nights, my mother would allow me to stay up late and watch old horror and science-fiction movies on television. My younger brothers and sister had gone to bed hours earlier. My mother, who had tried watching a movie with me, had fallen asleep soundly on the couch in the living room. Me, I was mister big stuff, sitting in my father's big orange colored, imitation leather rocker. The rocker was situated right in front of a window that faced the street in front of our house.

I can remember very clearly, watching television and suddenly feeling as if someone was watching me. I started feeling creepy all over. I knew it wasn't the movie I was watching, for I had watched that sucker probably a hundred times by then. I tried to ignore the feelings, but they kept getting stronger and stronger. I quickly decided that I would nonchalantly get up out of the rocker and pretend to be going to the kitchen. After getting out of the chair, and as I walked through the living room, I quickly stopped and peaked out of the window that also faced the street in front of the house.

Can you imagine how I felt, when I realized that a stranger was standing in front of the livingroom window and peering through it into the house. They had been looking right over my shoulder as I sat in my dad's rocker. I could not actually see the person, but I could clearly see their shadow. I could easily detect that they had their hands on their hips and that they were leaning forward just little to see through the window. As I watched the shadow, I observed the person reach up and scratch their head.

I tried not to panic. I told myself to stay calm. I left the dining room window and headed into the kitchen. I then picked up the telephone and tried to dial zero for the operator it as quietly as I could. This was well before "911" existed and when most telephones were still the noisy rotary dial type. Anyway, my mother must have heard me in the kitchen and started demanding to know why I was on the telephone. Of course, the stranger at the window heard her clearly. If he didn't, he heard me tell her that I was calling the police. That woke my mother up real good. As she came into the kitchen, I simultaneously tried to keep her calm and to explain the situation. Surprisingly, she did not get near as nervous as I would have predicted.

Eventually, the cops showed up and did a quick search of the neighborhood, and of course, they didn't find anything. Our "snooper" was long gone. My mother and I decided that night that we would not tell my siblings about the incident, so that they would not be scared every night when they went to bed. From that night on, all of our windows were closed tight and locked every night. I also began to become much more vigilant about what went on outside of our home.

A heck of a way to spend youthful days and nights wouldn't you say?

That was incident #1. I'll tell you about incident #2 in another post.