by Nancy Linenkugel
Contributor
“I called the cops on my own house,” a breathless friend, Elly, chirped into the phone. “I had to do something to prevent the wrong impression.”
Elly and her household, consisting of her loving and adventurous husband and their black-lab dog, sold the house they had been living in for 14 years in favor of a downtown loft apartment. While their first floor living and kitchen area and their upper floor of bedrooms were modestly furnished and relatively sparse, the basement was the destination for anything imaginable. Boxes from his mother’s estate? All there and never unpacked. A console TV vintage 1980? That was on top of a rough-hewn chest of drawers. Canning jars, hardware from a screen door installation project, a bowling bag, seasonal decorations – including a standing Christmas tree just ready to be moved upstairs – these and much more filled the basement.
Elly is an extremely organized person who, despite working full-time, was gradually getting the upstairs packing under control in good timing to meet the deadlines imposed by the real estate agent. However, their house had sold more quickly than expected and so the timeframe to get out of the house and settled into the new place was reduced to just three weeks.
“I’m doing fine with the upstairs, and Kevin is absolutely wonderful. He’s so patient, so focused and so helpful. He’s a dream husband, and you can’t have him. Nobody can have him. But it’s that darn basement that keeps me awake at night. And yes, I still have a bed to sleep in, but a fine lot of good that is when I crawl under the covers and my mind and eyes go ‘boing’ with my mental lists of what I still need to do.”
“So what do the police have to do with this?” I ask.
“The police? Oh, I needed to alert them. I’ve enlisted as many friends and acquaintances as I can think of and invited them all to come shopping in my basement. The other night one friend couldn’t come until 9:30 p.m., and since she really wanted the old TVs, I figured that the neighbors might see shadowy persons coming out of my house carrying TVs in the dark. So I called the cops before they could. Smart, huh?”
“You bet. Maybe you’re onto something like ‘reverse burglary.’ Just put the basement stuff out in the yard and pray that folks come along and take it.”
“I would if I had the time and energy to cart everything upstairs and out into the yard. This has to be a self-serve event. The most I can do is hold the door open.”
[Sr. Nancy Linenkugel is a Sylvania Franciscan sister and chair of the department of Health Services Administration at Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio.]