Sleepless and Ice Cream graciously offered to help me with yard work. I enjoy their company, so I graciously accepted the offer and paid someone else to do the work so that when they stopped by we could just hang out.
We hung out for some time, and then Ice Cream Man got an itch to do something, so I let him assemble a bench and picnic table. Sleepless and I helped him, mostly by checking in on him and offering to put ice in his glass while we refilled our own.
After “our” hard labor, we decided to walk to a nearby restaurant. Coffee cups in hand and a bottle of wine in a bag, we made our way, toggling in and out of the neighborhood streets. We approached an apartment complex whose parking lot paralleled one of the streets we wanted to toggle, so we began our trek across the lot. Almost halfway across the lot, I noticed a large, bushy grey-haired man who was barbecuing at one of the apartments and giving us an unfavorable look. “Hello,” I greeted him. “Where are you going?” he angrily grunted back. “What?” I asked. “Where are you going?” he repeated with the anger of a troll guarding an enemy bridge. “We’re walking to a restaurant,” I replied. “Turn around and go back,” he instructed us. “Why?” I asked. “Because I said so. This is private property,” he said like a really angry troll. We were pretty close to the gate, which would take us off ‘his property,’ so we kept walking. Just as Ice Cream Man made it through the gate, the angry troll ran up and locked the gate. Needless to say, we had words. Sleepless, not a troublemaker, did as the troll instructed while Ice Cream Man and I – troublemakers – continued to ‘converse’ with the troll. I eventually told Ice Cream Man we would see him on the other side, literally, and Sleepless and I did what many people have instructed others to do at some point in life – we went back to where we came from….and then met up with Ice Cream Man.
“If I had crossed that guy’s path when I was a kid I would have made it my daily goal to torment him,” I advised Sleepless. “Really?” she asked. “Yes. In fact, I can’t wait to walk back that way,” I told her. Not wanting to cause her any more stress, we opted against walking home that way and, instead, decided to enter my neighbor’s backyard because his gate was open. Just as we were making our way back, we heard someone shouting from across the way, “Hey! What are you doing?” Turns out my neighbor was across the way, didn’t recognize us and, like the angry troll, was about to lock the gate on us.
After two trespasses (a language I do not speak), we decided to lawfully call it a night.