Baby brother studied abroad this fall and Dad had some very good departure and return trip advice for him like "You should take your passport," and "Don't forget to bring your luggage back with you." When I studied abroad he told me, "Just make sure not to sleep on any park benches." Why would my father give me this sage advice?
About two weeks before packing up and skipping the country I went out on a Thursday night with the roommates to our usual joint. After a lovely evening of dancing with my $7 refillable plastic cup I decided to head home early so that my 6:30am alarm clock for work wouldn't be too painful. The girls wanted to stay until bar close so I hitched a ride home with a friend. Being the gentleman he is, the car sped off almost before my feet hit the pavement so by the time I got to my front door, looked at my teensy clutch purse and realized I had no keys there was no one to help me out. One girl had stayed home so I knocked and knocked and rang the doorbell repeatedly for about fifty gazillionteen minutes but to no avail. Then I started calling people; anyone really. After the roommates ignored my calls, I started in on anyone who might be awake but there was no answer.
Finally I gave up, grabbed a blanket someone had left on the porch couch after a household "pour your guts out over a bag of microwave popcorn and some candles" talk, and laid down to wait for the others to get home. The next thing I know the awful 6:30am alarm was going off and I was still on the porch, still locked out. Knocking incessantly actually worked this time and I was finally let into my own house.
Yes, when the girls came home they stumbled their way right past me without even noticing there was a human shaped lump under the blanket. The whole incident made me wonder if we would even have known if a homeless person was living on our porch. It also made my father tell me not to sleep on any park benches in Europe. Good advice, Dad. Good advice.
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4 comments:
Oh, come on, sleeping on park benches and at bus stops is what makes traveling in Europe memorable. At least for me...
lol i got locked out once by my dad for coming home too late on a school night back in high school. I didn't sleep on the porch though..I went to a friend's house and sleep there :P
Wait a minute... a house with a porch back in college. Was this Common Ground?!
Nah, too cold in most of Europe for that. And railway stations have these waiting room guards that make sure no one in them is homeless- you have to have a ticket. I did sleep on a beach in Lombok once because we arrived in the early hours of the morning and did not want to pay for the whole night in a 5 star hotel. We waited until dawn and got the early check in!
xx
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