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Have you ever gotten one of those quizzes where they asked you a series of questions to determine your survivability if you were ever a character in a horror flick?

Yeah, well I had a “horror flick” type of experience, and let me tell you, I broke every horror flick survival rule.  Here’s the story:

Yesterday, I got home after a talk at OLGC around 10 pm.  I parked my car up the driveway by the back door, as usual.  The motion light for the back door comes on, and I get out of the car.  I hear a male voice coming from the front yard/driveway call out, “Hello.”  I turn to look, but because I am in the light and everything is dark — I can’t see a thing.

So, I call back, “Hello?”

I hear nothing.

Critical error #1:  I start walking towards the voice.  I’m still kinda blind because of the light and can’t even see the location of the person.  But, I figure, I have to get the mail anyway, right?  I call out, “Who is it?  I can’t see you!”

No answer.  This is not good.  I have an unknown male at an unknown location not too far from me, who is not telling me who he is.

Critical error #2:  I continue to walk towards the mailbox/person.  He says something like “Hello” again.  Again, I say that I can’t see them, and ask who it is.  No reply. 

Critical error #3:  I continue walking, blindly, towards the person, who I see now as a shadowy male figure, whom I cannot identify.  I am a little concerned that it’s either the one neighbor, or the creepy neighbor.  Finally, a little sense enters my brain and I think to myself that maybe walking right up to this person is not the best decision to have made.  With this realization:

Critical error #4:  I keep going!  Whoo!  No sense of self-preservation in this girl!  I am such a good, cooperative little victim, eh?  It would probably serve me right if it were the Spawn of Chucky at the end of the driveway waiting for me with a machete.

So, I completely flunked my horror flick quiz.  When I finally got to the end of the driveway, I didn’t immediately recognize the man, since he normally walks around the block wearing a hat.  It was the nice Albanian gentleman who lives sort of across the street from me.  He doesn’t really speak English, so he probably didn’t know what I was asking him as I walked up the driveway.  He has 3 adult children with families who also have houses on my street.

He said “Hi” again when I got up to him.  Communication was a little hard, because I don’t speak Albanian, and he doesn’t speak English.  After a few hellos, he was still hanging at my driveway, and I didn’t know why he was there.  Did he need help with something?  I asked how he was doing — if he was good, and he said “Good.  Good.”  I became worried that I had cut him off or something when I had turned into my driveway when he was out for his walk, and tried to ask him about this, but I don’t think he understood what I was asking, and in any case did not appear to be upset or anything, just pleasant.  I asked what he had been doing, or how his day was, or something like that, and he replied, “8 o’clock – work; 4 o’clock – work; 8 o’clock – work; 10 o’clock,” and he shrugs.  I thought that he was talking about something in his day.  Then, I came to realize that he was making a comment about how I am never home.

He must have seen that I was confused or concerned or something, because then he was giving me a big bear hug and saying, “I sorry.  I sorry.”  Then, we just kind of smiled and laughed and he gave me another hug, and I grabbed my mail and we went our separate ways.

So, while it turned out to be a good experience, children, don’t try this at home!  Some alternative reactions that were suggested to me by my coworkers were:  1) stay/get back into the car or 2) call the police or 3) go inside your house as if you hadn’t heard the “Hello.”