No one had ever tried to break into my house before but I knew that what I was hearing was the sound of someone trying to break into my house.
I knew all the night-time sounds my house made.
Possums jumping onto our roof.
Water pipes clunking.
The floorboard outside the toilet that makes a high-pitched squeak like an old mouse struggling to start a mouse-sized lawnmower.
I couldn’t hear any of that.
I could only hear the noise of someone trying to break into my house.
I had to call the police.
I couldn’t call the police.
We don’t have a home phone.
Mum and Dad say they are old-fashioned.
I do not have a mobile phone.
If I wanted to call the police I would have to go and wake up Mum and Dad. Or sneak into their room, get one of their phones and call the police.
I had never called the police before.
They would probably need a lot of information about what was happening.
How many burglars are there?
Are they average height?
Are they Caucasian? (I had no idea what Caucasian was, but whenever I read about burglars in the newspaper, a lot of burglars seemed to be it.)
Were they wearing dark clothes?
What were they last seen doing?
To find out any of this information-the-police-would-probably-want-to-know, I would have to leave my bedroom, go downstairs to the front-door-that-was-being-broken-into and try to observe the burglar or burglars.
I was not going to leave my bedroom.
I was definitely not going to go downstairs.
I was absolutely certainly not going to try to observe the burglar or burglars.
I looked at my feet.
They were moving.
They were moving out of my bedroom.
They were moving to the top of the stairs.
‘Stop moving,’ I told my feet.
They ignored me. (Of course they ignored me. They couldn’t hear a word I was saying. They were feet. Feet don’t have ears.)
My feet moved down the stairs.
‘Stop! I command you to stop!’ I said to my feet.
They just kept on walking towards the sounds of the burglarising.
My feet finally arrived at the sounds of the burglarising. Through the glass panel in the front door I could see a dark shape.
One dark shape.
There was only one person trying to break into my house.
That made me feel better.
Maybe I could take care of one burglar.
(I wished the ‘take care’ that I would need to do to the burglar was the sort of ‘take care’ where you wrapped them up in a blanket, put on their favourite TV program and told them to drink lots of fluids, not the ‘take care’ where you wrapped them up in a fist, put on your favourite wrestling hold and made them drink lots of being unconscious.)
Maybe I could capture him (or her; Hils would remind me that women can be burglars too) and become a hero.
That made me feel better.
Then the fact that an actual person was actually trying to break into my actual house made me feel really, very, super un-better.
This burglar was clearly really good at being a burglar because they were doing it on their own. If I was going to do burglarising I would want someone to help me. I needed help with geography so I would certainly need help with burglary.
As I wondered all this I was standing by my front door watching the shadowy outline of the burglar trying to do a burglary.
I realised that I recognised the burglar’s shadowy outline.
It looked a lot like the shadowy outline of a walking-mountain-man.
My feet moved closer to the shadowy outline.
It looked a lot like the shadowy outline of a walking-mountain-man because . . .
IT WAS THE SHADOWY OUTLINE OF THE WALKING-MOUNTAIN-MAN.
THE WALKING-MOUNTAIN-MAN WAS TRYING TO BREAK INTO MY HOUSE!
This wouldn’t have been happening if I had only listened to Hils.