Friday Existential Angst

So a nice, relaxing night at home just turned into absolute chaos, complete with nearly a dozen axe-wielding firefighters, poised, ready to hack into anything that could potentially face a hazard … any hazard at all.

 

It was a bit disturbing, to be honest.

 

But soothing, considering the fact that there were eardrum piercing alarms wailing throughout the entire building along with smoke billowing from downstairs.

 

And, half an hour later the culprit – an overfilled dryer hose – was disabled and all was well…

 

Except for my clothes.

 

Thankfully, mine were not the scorched ones laying smoldering in the dryer, but the ones spinning around in the washer, waiting to get warm.

 

And alas, the inside of my apartment is about to resemble the ghetto, complete with underwear hanging from every surface.

 

At least this time there was something to report. I passed the time outside with my neighbors on both sides of my brick and mortar slice of toast regaling them with tales of my last Philly 9-1-1 call, complete with hulking police goon promising to return to the scene of the alleged crime for "a poke."

 

Yeah, hard to forget the time Rachel and I convinced ourselves a scary criminal had infiltrated the (locked windows of) the Netherhouse. But, in West Philly, anything can happen, and as we stood, panicked, outside the door waiting for the cavalry, that reality literally hit close to home.

 

Or so we thought. As the nine officers combed every nook, cranny, closet and drawer of our massive 7-bedroom abode, the fact that I'd chosen a poker and Rachel, I think, a stick, to protect ourselves with dawned on us: were it the real deal, oh yeah, we'd be so dead.

 

And that's when big, bad Officer Creepy uttered his poker-derived innuendo. Nowhere was safe…

 

And so I moved, but the guilt still manages to dog me, makes me wonder if maybe I've gone old, or weak, or soft. I've lived in cities around the globe and here I am running away from a neighborhood where houses regularly run in the $300,000s because of a big lug and a scary noise.

 

Yet somehow things still don't feel quite "right", crispy undies notwithstanding. It's not the house, or the 'hood, or the whole kit and caboodle. Or is it? I am uncertain, unsure, unable to decide what's best.

 

So, for a autumn Friday I find myself asking: what next?