Jumping To Conclusions

Last night I had the living bejeebus scared out of me.

On one of the walls of my livingroom are two windows. These windows are smaller than average windows, and they are up high on the wall. The windowsills are about chest high on me. The windows face my side yard, and after that is a street and across the street is a house. This house has a family that includes a few teenagers living there.

I live in an old neighborhood. Window coverings lean towards the old fashioned pull shades, so even when the shades are pulled, you can see people in silhouette. The house across the street on that side doesn’t always have their shades pulled, so you really can see it all, even without trying.

Long intro into this story, I know!

Last night, I walked downstairs and started walking across the living room. Well, since I’m walking in the direction of those windows, I am looking out at this neighbor’s house without intending on looking out at their house. I just couldn’t help it! Since the windows are up high, to look out the window, you are looking up and out.

What I see in an upstairs window across the street is the shade open and what looks like someone hanging in the window, facing out of the window. I can see a pair of dark pants, and they are up high enough so that I can see the bottom of the pants and realize that there isn’t a chair or a desk under them. My first thought is one of the kids in the house picked a terrible and permanent solution to a temporary problem. What do I do? I scream of course.

Then I ran upstairs, grabbed Ron and took him to the spare room to look out that window. Well, since this is more on the same level of the house with the room across the street, I can get a better view too. Ron very calmly said “oh yeah, I saw that yesterday. One of the kids must have hung their jeans up on the window to dry or something”. DUH!

That sure wasn’t the conclusion that I jumped to looking out my window. I am too old to be scared that much that late at night! I’m just surprised that no one called 911 while driving down the street and seeing the same thing I did. Then again, maybe everyone else is just a little bit smarter than I am and doesn’t jump to conclusions as easily as I do.

At least this is one story with a happy ending. The down side is that with as much rain as we’ve been having, those jeans hanging there probably aren’t dry yet.