I would like to emphasize that I do get home in one piece every evening. Or as close to one piece as possible. But it's a bit of work; there's always something I have to deal with. And then when I get home, things are not necessarily over; sadly, I have a bit of a strained relationship with my neighbors on that account.
Let me begin with what happened last night. I was standing at the bus stop, minding my own business -- a hazardous exercise, I always say -- and a car pulled up, the driver offered me a ride, I thought it was someone from work, I hopped in -- turns out it was a complete stranger. I made my apologies and tried to exit, but not only was the car already moving at a fast clip, the door was childproof locked. Blast my naivete!
But then I realized that the car was of a model that the driver, certainly having picked it up secondhand, did not fully understand. But I knew precisely what it was, from my, ah, previous line of work...never mind that anyway, but the point is the car was an Aston Martin DB5.3. Yes, the Point Three is the important bit. The boys at R&D experimented with a few new models of the DB5, for the sake of getting good men out of a bad situation. So what I knew about the car, that the driver didn't know, was that there were buttons for ejector seats. For both the driver and the passenger. So I reached for the buttons --
Bear in mind that this particular model of DB5 was recalled because the ejector seats tended to toss people about a hundred times higher than R&D had expected. So I reached for the buttons, hit the one I thought was for the driver, and I was like "Sayonara suckEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...." as I was chucked two thousand feet skyward.
Pretty lucky aim on the ejector seat, though, I wound up crashing right through my neighbors' roof.
Or unlucky, because my neighbors, instead of being startled and distressed and confused and running around too distracted to pay attention to me, knew exactly what to do with me.
But let me back up a bit. Because this was not the first time I had put a hole in their house.
See, there was one particular evening where I wasn't sure how to get home -- it was too late to beg for a ride from a friend, too late for the bus, the Uber service wasn't picking up. Alas, I was at a loss! But then I passed by a store window, and I saw a paint mixer...and I remembered I had a can of soda in my bag.
I'm not going to elaborate upon my methods for reaching the paint mixer. All I will say is that, upon being finished with the mixer, I had a can of soda that was visibly pulsating. Which was just how I needed it. I turned the can upside down, firmly grasped it, pulled the tab -- and it went FWOOOOOSH and I went up with it.
The end of my arc had me crashing through someone's great big front-room picture window. As I lay there in the wreckage, I realized that my aim was pretty damn lucky, because this was the house of my neighbors. Who were -- oh, they were startled, they were distressed, they were confused, they were distracted. Poor dears. I offered to brew them a potion to keep them warm while the window was taken care of.
I didn't tell them it was just hot chocolate.
Anyway! The following evening, I found myself pursued by a pack of wild Ice Unicorns. Which are carnivorous pack hunters. Nasty fellows. They don't even give you a running start, most of the time. Utterly beastly, I tell you! So they were gaining on me quickly, and I wondered what on earth I could do -- perhaps call for help from Santa, he knew how to handle such creatures of the cold, but I'd asked him too many favors already. And then I remembered I had a can of soda in my bag -- and there was the store with the paint mixer again!
So I kicked my way inside, grabbed the paint mixer from the front display window, snuck to the back of the store while the Ice Unicorns crept in, plugged the paint mixer in, mixed up that can of soda, held the can upside-down, shouted "Sayonara suckers!", pulled the tab --
Had a bit of a headache in the moments after realizing that I'd done all this indoors. Ah, but floors and ceilings can be repaired anyway. I sailed over the streets, briefly marveling in the bright city lights, before reaching the top of my arc. When I came down, it was, I should say, a lucky bit of aiming, for I found myself falling straight for the neighbor's lawn.
I landed in the deep snow. Which I would have thought was lucky, because this time I didn't destroy anything, except maybe a dumb snow fort someone had built. But, the neighbors came out of the house, and they were like "YOU!" and started pelting snow at me. It all stuck to my coat and my trousers and it just kept piling on. Like I was turning into a snow sculpture or something.
And then one of them roared a battle cry and charged at me with a great ball of snow in hand and raised it up and shoved it over my head like SHOOMP. And I was turned into a snowman.
I managed to get out of that one by hopping inside my own house -- somewhat difficult to open the door with twig arms -- and melting by the fireplace.
Anyway, that's the context for what happened when I trespassed on the neighbors for the third time. I am posting this from a cell in their basement dungeon.