Ding Dong

Okay, now I really feel old. Just now, I was sitting here at my desk when I saw a shaggy preteen swoop up the driveway and ring our doorbell, then swoop back across the street, like a hairy pelican. I watched him and two smaller accomplices duck behind a white truck and stay there. I could see six shoes. I studied them, since my desk faces the street, with comfortable interest. What were they doing back there? Soon after, it occurred to me that they were waiting. Waiting for me. Doorbell ditch, we called it in my youth. According to the rules, I was now supposed to come to the door and peer up and down the street with a perplexed expression while they giggled behind the truck. Not a big payoff to this game, really.

Well, okay. I was mildly annoyed that they might have woken Jarrah. But by the time I opened the door (first I got the mail, so they would be cheated out of the perplexed expression) I was feeling rather saucy. "Hello, boys!" I called across the street. "I can see you!" No response. "Why don't you come out from behind that truck because I want to ask you something." I wasn't really sure where I was going with this but I was amusing myself. "Can you come out, please? I just want to ask you one thing." Suddenly, they uprooted themselves all at once and tore off down the street. "Come back, boys!" I called. "Don't be shy! I just want to ask you one thing!"

I'm not sure what that would have been, so I guess it's a good thing they didn't want to know.