In between Kabuki work during the workday, I often go for a walk out doors to get some exercise. And that is often when I return phone calls.
So today I am walking in the cold with gloves, scarf, hat, etc.
I’ve been walking for a while when about a block up the street from me a little boy comes out of a house, waves at me and yells for me to help.
Then another boy comes out of the house. I’d say one is 10 years-old and the other is 12.
They yell for me to hurry up and come inside the house to help their mother.
I ask what the problem is and they say she is trapped upstairs by a couch.
I have no idea what this means, but they run back in the house and tell me to follow.
As a precaution, I ask them if it is OK with their mother if I come in the house to see what’s going on, and they say she sent them to get help.
An odd note to this story is that last August I was walking by this SAME house with a fenced in yard and talking on my cell phone, when one of the three dogs in the yard jumped over the fence and bit my shoulder as I walked by the fence. I guess the voice on the cell phone drove the dog nuts or something and it tried to bite at it as I walked by the fence.
So at that time, last August, I did talk to the owner of the house about that situation. It was a big dog and it put a big Dracula bite on my shoulder that was streaming blood. The woman was very apologetic and offered to cover any bills and whatever I needed.
And she showed me the paperwork to prove that the dog had all his shots so I didn’t have some dog rabies or something.
So needless to say, as I walk into the house, I ask them if their dogs are going to bite me if I come in to help their mother.
They say no, and I don’t see or hear any dogs this time. So I go in. But I do smell an intense dog piss and sh*t smell.
The steps that lead upstairs are blocked by a huge filthy couch that stinks of dog piss.
Apparently they were trying to move the pissy couch downstairs to throw it in the garbage.
But the couch was just too big to fit down the stairs. And it is wedged so tightly between the steps, wall and ceiling that it won’t budge.
Not only that, but the leg/feet of the couch have punched holes in the wall and reside there as it is pegged into the house. The stairs and wall and ceiling have really been damaged by the mom and 2 little kids trying to get this couch down the stairs.
And the mom is trapped upstairs behind the couch wedged into the upstairs hallway.
So I try to lift the couch out from below and it just won’t move because above me the legs are in the wall and parts of it are firmly wedged into the steps.
And I don’t want to rip the rest of this lady's wall out or tear down her steps by forcing it.
So I climb over the couch in order to get upstairs where I can see where it is stuck.
It’s not going to move unless the wall, steps, or couch is busted up.
So I ask the lady, since she is throwing the couch out, can I break it into pieces.
She says yes and hands me a hatchet. ???
So I proceed to hack up that couch into pieces, and bust it all apart, pulling each piece and plank from it and setting it down upstairs until it is hollowed out, and I can fold it up and work it out of the holes in the wall and carry it downstairs.
I got a call on my cell while I was cutting it up, and it occurred to me how bizarre it was that one second I was walking minding my own business, and the other minute I was in someone’s house cutting up their couch with a hatchet.
She was very thankful and said she’d make me some brownies. I told her I enjoyed the exercise, as it has been a while since I chopped up something with a hatchet.
I told her if she ever needed something destroyed again, to let me know.
Then I went back to Kabuki-making.
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