Archives for June 2006

I thought I heard a noise!

I was sitting on my couch last night watching T.V. It was about 11 p.m. and my husband was working an evening shift. Chris wasn’t due back until after midnight.

I thought I heard a noise outside so I turned the T.V. volume down. It was still pleasantly warm outside, so while I had the front door closed, I still had the kitchen window at the back of the house open. I sat there, my muscles tensed, listening carefully.

Then the phone rang.

It was my husband calling from work. I started to tell him that I’d heard a noise but he was in a hurry. He wanted to get one of our friends e-mail addresses for one of the nurses at the hospital. I walked over to the computer and I was looking up the address while I spoke with Chris. As I started to look for the address I thought I heard more noise coming from the front of the house.

The front door knob rattled, then it clicked. I told my husband that someone was at the door. Then the door opened and it was our boarder. He nearly scared me to death and I told him so!

Well, it was actually our former boarder. You see, he packed his bags and moved out yesterday morning. He’d left his big suitcases here because he was going to travel around the province for a few days. He was due to come back sometime today to pick up his bags. That’s why he still had a key. Just in case Chris and I were out when he came back today.

Today. Not Yesterday at 11 p.m.. Today!

He totally took me by surprise and I think he’s lucky I wasn’t sitting there waiting with a gun in hand. We don’t arm ourselves for personal protection here in Canada – not legally anyway. But if I had had a gun, or something worthy of protecting myself with in the house, this would have been the perfect situation since he’d given me some warning sounds first. Now that would have taken him by surprise wouldn’t it?

Tell me folks, if someone has a key to your home but doesn’t live there anymore, and only lived there temporarily in the first place, would you think it wrong of them to just walk in at 11 p.m. at night without at least knocking on the door first to announce themselves?

Hey buddy you don’t live here anymore! You can’t just walk in and scare me half to death.

As you can probably tell from reading some of my posts, our boarder was starting to tick me off in the last few weeks. He came here from Korea to study English so he was away at school all day each weekday. Sometimes he’d come home by 5 p.m. or so but he’d head upstairs and go to sleep. I’d end up delaying our dinner until he woke up or until we managed to wake him up. I shouldn’t have done that, but I did.

Other times he just wouldn’t come home until 8 or 9 or even later, and he wouldn’t call to let me know that he was staying out and that he’d miss dinner or be late for dinner. How am I supposed to prepare a meal for someone when I don’t even know if they are coming home? I found his behaviour rude and disrespectful. The room and board that he paid for included three meals a day, but this isn’t a restaurant.

We have a new boarder moving in on the 10th. She seems like a very nice person. He was too, overall, but as you can see he did some things that I considered quite rude. At least after our experience with our first boarder I know now to have a few more rules, and to set them right from the beginning. I don’t mind if my boarder goes out after school with friends and has some fun. That’s great. All I want is a phone call so that I know whether I have to make dinner for them or not. I think that’s fair.

Anyway. What do you think? Have you ever had someone who happened to still have a key to your house come in unexpectedly and scare you?