Amanda and I went to bed last night at 11 p.m. after watching WAY too much of The Bachelor and after the Oregon Ducks lost the BCS game (notice the gender balance here). At 1:30 a.m., I heard something unusual outside. I jumped up, turned on the lamp and walked around the downstairs in hot pursuit of the noise. I didn't see or hear anything, so I grabbed a glass of water and went back to bed. About 20 minutes later, Amanda must have heard something as she shot out of bed to have a look for herself.
Moments later I heard, "Paolo! There's someone at the front door!"
I ran out and turned the corner to see Amanda sitting with her back to the door. I'd never consider my wife much of a sniper and this was a case in point. If there was some real danger, Amanda had trapped herself in the only spot where if she made a move - standing up, moving left or right - she'd be exposed to the porch windows. She also yelled to me, exposing her position to whoever was outside. Clearly she hadn't played Goldeneye as a child.
"Thou shalt not expose thyself to the enemy or have to start the level over."
Additionally, the whole episode freaked out my Mom's dog, Simon, who we are dogsitting, and he proceeded to poop just in front of Amanda. Awesome. I stepped around Simon's weapon of choice and could see a woman sitting out on our door steps. I opened the door.
She stood up and turned, tipsy on her heels and wearing a blazer jacket over a halter top and a short skirt. Some would say she was dressed like a hooker. Others would mistake her for a waitress. It depends on your dining preference. There was no car or taxi on the street. She appeared on our doorstep like a prom night baby, only bigger and drunker.
In college, it's a fairly common occurrence, a blessing for some, to find a drunk girl at the doorstep of the wrong house. These days, it's just an annoyance.
"I'm looking for Alisha [I forget the actual name]," she said. "She lives here."
"No, she doesn't," I replied, but backtracked. "But let me check if she's here."
Over the course of living with my brother for the past two years, it hasn't been uncommon to meet new people in various rooms of my house at odd hours of the day. I searched the guest bedroom and ran upstairs to ask Sergio if he was expecting a drunk girl at the door or if he knew of her. He didn't know what was going on, so I ran back downstairs to turn away the girl. Thereafter, Sergio periodically counseled me from the top of the stairs for the remainder of the episode.
I returned to the door. "Nope, she's not here," I said.
"Well, then I need to talk to the master or director of this house," she replied, clearly struggling with words.
"That'd be me and I'm telling you you're at the wrong house. Where do you need to be?"
The girl went on to mumble some other friends' names and said that she had actually lived at my house with them. She also mentioned that she thought she was in some other part of Tacoma, miles away. After some more useless banter I offered to make a phone call for her, which she refused. I wished her luck and shut the door.
Amanda and I had just gotten in bed before the girl knocked on our door. We opened and let her know that we'd call the police to give her a ride. At this point, Amanda decided to befriend her and offer a blanket, which the girl refused despite it being 28 degrees outside and her attire not being conducive to the weather conditions.
I called 911, for the first time ever in my life, to let the operator know that there was a stranded drunk at my door. It wasn't my proudest moment, but it was exciting. "Bad boys, bad boys, what cha gonna do?..."
Before the police arrived, the girl fled from our doorway. I didn't catch exactly why, but Amanda said she overheard me calling the police and must have regained enough consciousness to realize that the back of a cop car is a bad way to end the night. When the police arrived I pointed them in her direction. She wasn't dangerous, but she was still a threat to herself.
Amanda and I got little to no sleep for the remainder of the night. Amanda worried about the girl being warm and wondering where her home was. I worried about how far I could get these days if I tried playing Goldeneye again, or if I could still maintain a 90% win ratio against Scott playing head-to-head Halo games.
I hear some people think about buying a gun when their homes are threatened. It must have been the college nostalgia of drunks knocking on the door in the middle of the night, because my mind drifted off to a gentler world where threats are played out in video games and the drunks make it home - just not my home - at the end of the night.