Assignment 10: BOO--Amir Abou-Jaoude

I have always been picky about what I eat for breakfast. I went through a phase in 1st Grade where I would eat a Little Debbie Brownie for breakfast. Then, it was a banana and peanut butter. Next, I devoured boxes of Cocoa Krispies. Later, I consumed store-bought crepes. But, one summer, my go-to breakfast food was graham crackers and peanut butter.

I opened the pantry, got the Honey-Maid box from the top shelf, grabbed the Jif peanut butter, and walked over to the kitchen counter. I removed the graham crackers from their shelter of brown plastic. Then, I took a butter knife, plunged in headfirst into the Jif jar, and prepared to spread it all across my graham crackers. I glanced over at the window to see if my cat would be joining me for breakfast.

And that's when I noticed that someone was looking at me through the window.

He looked like the new Norman Bates. Sunglasses covered his eyes, so you really couldn't see who he was. But Norman Bates would wear dark colors and a black trench coat--and this person was wearing a solid purple T-shirt. Yellow nylon shorts ran up to his thighs, and he was mounted on a sky blue bike.

And he was looking, through the bushes in the front of my house, at me.

I nearly dropped the peanut butter on the floor. At school, they had told us of the danger of letting strangers into her home. How one unlucky soul was abducted when she answered the door for a young man. Granted, the man in the video had not been wearing a purple shirt, but this voyeur's wardrobe did not eliminate the possibility he had a nefarious scheme to kidnap me.

He slowly pedaled the bike further up my driveway, dismounted, climbed the two steps, and rang the doorbell. I interpreted its resounding sound to be an audible harbinger of death.

What would I do? Would I answer the door, and try to fight him before he got to me? Would I jam the knife, laden with peanut butter, into his guts? Would I deliver a blow to his head with the peanut butter jar? Would I stuff his mouth with graham crackers so that he suffocated?

But before I could decide on my next course of action, the door handle moved. He was not waiting for a death by graham crackers.

He was coming for me. This was his first step in breaking into the house. He would drag me onto his bike, a la Miss Gulch in The Wizard of Oz.  Then, he would take me to his secret lair, a labyrinth from which there was no escape.

I was so frightened I abandoned all plans to try to fight the intruder with breakfast foods. Instead, I called my mom, who was at work.

I was counseled to keep calm and remain in the kitchen. I was told to eat my breakfast and see what happened in a couple minutes. I finished spreading the peanut butter on my graham crackers, sat down with a cup of coffee, and nervously bided my time. After a while, I noticed that the bike had disappeared from view.

When she got home later that afternoon, my mom opened the front door to survey the damage the stranger had caused. On the door handle, he had attached a coupon for Domino's Pizza.

It was a pizza delivery after all. Or was it?