Social Step Ladders
a little more love on the internet. In case and/or when the link dies, it's Anthony Bourdain eating a cheeseburger from In-N-Out and describing his love of the chain.
Anthony Bourdain passed away this week. I can't claim to love him as much as everyone else on the internet, but I always watched his videos when they popped up on my social media. I have no personal antecedents to share here, but I was touched reading all the small stories of him interacting with, well, everyone. Today was one of those days where I thought, yes I can step up to the plate.
Yes, I will live up to Anthony's standard. I will go out there and eat something new. I will go out there and talk to someone new. Except then life got in the way, I didn't get eat until 3PM, by which point I was starving and just wanted a known-good and quick burrito. Alas, the plan was ruined. I sat around a cafe for a bit, read a book, and generally didn't do anything new. I headed back home, and guess what? My keys were [hopefully] locked inside the house1.
Normally it's not a big deal, as someone is always home. Nope - the one weekend I forget my keys, everyone else is gone too. Great. I could've texted my landlord, but instead I wanted to see if I could do something crazy. There's no direct way to get into our backyard, so we normally leave the back door unlocked (it only goes to our garage anyways). Maybe I could ask a neighbor to go through their yard and get to mine? How bad could it be?
Sure, let's try that. The house right next door had a small-ish fence (or so it seemed) between our yards. I'll walk up, awkwardly explain my story, and I dunno, borrow a ladder? I introduce myself to my neighbor, who I've sadly never met before. Dennis, it turns out, has some fantastic yard art made of rusted bike parts. I'll have to upload a picture sometime. Anyways, he didn't even blink an eye, and immediately grabbed me some milk crates and a ladder. It turns out that the “small fence” was actually on a hill, so it ended up being about an 8ft jump. OK, now this is getting a little crazy.
Nope, Dennis still rocks. We threw the ladder over, and left it resting in the garden. I jumped up on top of the fence, grabbed the lader, walked my way down. Was the back door, which is always open, in fact left open? I have no idea, because I was pumping so much adrenaline through my veins that I saw a crack in our bathroom window and immediately realized that was the only way I was getting back into my house. Window up, jump in, gracefully2 roll over the toilet, and voila, we are IN BABY.
I found my keys sitting in my gym shorts3, exactly as planned. Grabbed those, unlocked the garage, ran the ladder around the block back to Dennis. He was not even one bit phased by all this! Said it was a pleasure to meet me and hope I'd come back sometime soon. I absolutely will Dennis, and with a six pack of your choosing. I like to think this was all thanks to Anthony Bourdain4 and his advice of just going out and talking to people. Who knows if it actually was, but I do know that the next time I head to my neighbor's, it will be because of him.
People are great.