Porch Profanity

I may have stood on my front porch the other night and kind of yelled a profanity-laced sentence at the top of my lungs. And I hope my neighbors don't hate me for it.

In my defense, I had a good reason. No: it wasn't that I finally went crazy over the sheer volume of poop I'm forced to deal with on the daily (although that kind of breakdown seems inevitable). Let me set it up for you.

It was about 9:15 pm, and I had just finished putting my kids to bed. Their bedtime is usually 8:30 - and I'm pretty strict about that - but it's so hard to get them in sleepytime-mode when it's still light outside. By 9, though, it's sufficiently dark. I was just preparing to leave their bedroom when I heard the ding-dong of the doorbell. Just once.

My first thought: WTF? Who could be here at this hour?
My second thought: That doorbell-ringing fool better not wake my kids.
My third thought: Damn. Curtis is already in bed. That means I have to answer the door in my effin' pajamas.

While I was thinking all this, I was slowly making my way toward the door. Out of the boys' room, down the hall, down the stairs to the landing. Our front door is flanked by two tall, skinny windows, so before I opened it I peeped out to see who I'd be griping at for coming by so late.

There was nobody there.

But y'all know doorbells don't ring themselves, so I stood at the window and looked into the darkness as hard as I could. I didn't see anything. Not a soul. Not a leaf stirring. I must've stood there for a minute and a half, just staring out. Everything looked normal, so I turned to go back up the stairs.

The dog was sitting there, and I thought, "While I'm down here I might as well take Josie out to potty." So I called her to me and leashed her up. Then I opened the front door.

The moment I stepped outside, I heard noises beneath my feet - which was startling in itself. What was even more startling was when what appeared to be three fully-grown men hurtled their way out from where they'd been hiding underneath my porch. They ran as fast as they could toward a getaway car which was parked unassumingly in front of my next-door neighbors' house, its lights off.

I could have shrieked like a scared little girl. I could have burst into tears on the spot. And truthfully, I was frightened enough in that split-second to realistically do either one of those things. But in addition to being frightened, I was also angry. And so while the interlopers fled across my yard to their escape, I bellowed at the top of my lungs the first thing that came to mind:

"Get the F#%! out from under my porch, you a$$holes!"

And then I held up my phone, which I had conveniently decided to bring outside with me, and pretended to punch in some numbers. "I'm calling the cops!" I screamed. "I've got your license plate number!"

I'm surprised nobody called the cops on me, really, for standing outside making a racket. It was a nice night, and I swear every single window in the neighborhood was open. And it was only 9:15, so I'm betting most of my neighbors were still awake. Of course they hadn't seen what had gone down under the porch, so they probably think I'm this crazy lunatic who stands outside and cusses. Or that I was having some vicious fight with my husband (which probably fits in with their suspicion that he's a slave-driving tyrant who makes me mow). Either way, I'm sure everyone's opinion of me has gone down a couple of notches.

But I was just protecting my turf, y'all. And what was I supposed to say? They trampled my flowers.