Memories of the Past: Home Invasion

Ashwin and I were talking about this incident last night. How it was one of the funniest stories from college. I'm even considering writing a bit about it for stand-up. So I thought I should try and catalog as much of the experience as I could remember first.

I don't know the actual date of this incident, but I know it was senior year of college, and it took place at Fort Awesome. For whatever reason most of the guys of the house are gone, and basically just Derek and I are home. I think it was the beginning of Summer or maybe some long weekend.

There has been a ridiculous rain storm raging for quite a bit outside. The basement is flooding and I am not enjoying being in my room which is there.The basement has flooded before and destroyed my computer on its previous attempt. Now it's all over the floor of my room and I just don't want to deal with it. Luckily our landlord brought over a shopvac from the previous flooding and I can pump some of the water out. However once the container fills with water it has to be taken outside to be dumped and drained. I cannot do this by myself so I went upstairs to enlist Derek to help me. I think he may have been sleeping when I went up there. But he was super supportive and willing to help me out of this jam. So we head downstairs and begin the losing battle of vacuuming up water from the pool that has collected over my room. After a minute or two we have enough water and must go up the back stairs hauling a huge container of water. It is heavy, unwieldy, and full of sloshing water. Then we have to take the bucket out into the storm, and dump it into the drain in the street so that it cannot rush back under the house. Like I said, it was a losing battle. We made several trips into the storm around the house before we ever saw a dent in the pool of water in my room. And even then the storm was still raging, so water was still leaking in.

During one of our exits out to the back we run into David. Now for this story to make sense you must first know who David is. David is a black, 30-something, skinny homeless man who lives somewhere near our house. I heard speculation that he slept by our shed or somewhere nearby on occasion. Either way he was often lurking around our property. He was always very nice and cordial, and fairly charismatic. He would often try and talk to us as we were leaving or coming into the house. I talked to him on several occasions, and we often talked for several minutes before he would ask for some money or food or whatever. He was a pretty chill guy and I always felt pretty safe around him. I think he owned a truck, and you could often see him doing tasks to earn money such as collecting recycling or branches or whatever. I think he may have even done some work for our landlord but I don't know. Anyway, I liked David fairly well and had grown somewhat accustomed to his presence around the house as many of the guys had.

Anyway, like I was saying, on one of our exits out into the storm we run into David behind the house. I'm not too surprised to see him, but I really just don't want to deal with him right then. He talks to us about the storm and we make some small talk. He seems intrigued by the water entering the basement and has his own theories about how its getting down there. He seems fairly preoccupied though because he keeps talking about getting the gutters cleared out. Whether he thought we wanted his help, he was doing it for the landlord, or he just wanted to, he began to climb a ladder and clear leaves from our gutters. I'm a little freaked out at this point because it's still storming and lightning is flashing. Him being on the ladder during this is freaking me out, especially if he thinks we somehow want him to be doing this. But we just let him do his thing anyway, and continue to bail water out from the basement.

Everytime we come out to dump the water into the drain David walks with us. He talks to us until we head back into the house and return a few minutes later with a new bucket full of water. One of the times when we're down in the basement vacuuming we hear footsteps down the stairs. We turn to the door expectantly. No one else is home... then David comes walking through the doorway into my room. Before I can even be stunned he loudly exclaims "Home invasion!" He says it as if it somehow validates and explains everything he has just done. I am shocked. Not only did this homeless man come into our house unwelcomed, but he came down some stairs after us, then walked into my room and announced his presence by saying everything that was wrong with what he just did. Home invasion.

I really have no idea what we said after that. I'm pretty sure it was fairly awkward. We just kept going and dumping out water and had him follow us out. I don't even know if we continued vacuuming after that. I don't think we chastised him. I don't think anything happened. It was just a bizarre and stunning event that transpired some random night senior year. That's about it.

HOME INVASION!