WHAT A DAY!

On Sunday Summer and I (Scotty is writing this) leave for our cruise to the Bahamas! Saturday was a VERY full day, little did we know it was going to be even longer than what we first thought.

First, we finished the last day of our garage sale, we had to wake up at 7:00 to help take the tables out and watch the junk. That lasted until about 12:00. The Razorbacks were playing on ESPN2 and so I watched some of that.

Next on our agenda was 4 things before we headed to my parents house for a cookout, (1) go to my grandma's house; (2) go to Wal-Mart to pick up some last minute things for our trip; (3) go to the church and drop off some board games; (4)stop by the storage buildings that we have some stuff in to see if Summer's backpack/bag/purse box is in there.

That is where our day got a little bit longer than originally expected.

I will break it down for you:

My parents rent 3 storage units in this one storage unit place in Rogers. Summer and I have some stuff (couch, coffee table, side tables, TV stand etc.) in one unit, there is another unit that only has a little bit of stuff in it (a sectional couch and a couple of boxes) and my sister has the final storage unit (stuffed FULL of stuff). Megan's (my sister) unit is so full in fact that directly in front of the door is a couch, standing on end, blocking the door-it would be nearly impossible to squeeze past the couch and get in the unit, let alone be INSIDE the unit.

In the past couple of months there have been many vandels go to storage places and cut the locks off of storage units and take things. Two of our units have been cut twice though nothing has been stolen (to our knowledge).

Summer and I arrived at the units and checked the first unit that had our couch/TV stands/coffee tables in it...and we were unable to find the box we were looking for. Before we left, it was decided that we should check the other units to make sure the box didn't some how get put in one of those. I was not quite sure of which unit was ours, though I knew what our locks looked like. We got to where our units were and ONCE AGAIN our locks were cut, but were nowhere to be seen.

I walked up to the one that I thought was my sister's unit and opened the door and saw exactly what I expected to see, a HUGE couch blocking the door. I closed the door and latched it. Then I walked to the next door unit (mine) and opened it, the lock was cut on it as well. Opened the door and looked around and the box was nowhere to be found...BUMMER.

Now I realize that was a very boring, seemingly pointless story but there is one key point that I will bring back up now. After I closed my sister's unit I CLOSED THE DOOR AND LATCHED IT. While we were standing in the next door unit, Summer and I heard some rustling, my first thought was that there was a possum or a raccoon somehow that had gotten in to the unit...GROSS...but then we realized that the noises were of some PERSON rustling through the things. Summer and I quickly closed the door to our unit and got into the car, when we looked back at my sisters unit, we saw the door bulging...like somebody was trying to get out!

Somebody was living in my sister's storage unit!

However, thanks to the quick thinking of me, I had latched the unit shut, he was effectively shut inside the unit. Not knowing what to do, I got out my trusty little cell phone and dialed 9-1-1. I quickly told the dispatch lady of everything that was going on and asked for them to send someone to help us, because we didn't know if this person had a gun and wanted to kill us or what...all I knew was that I was not going to go near that unit until the cops showed up. While we were waiting for the police, we continued to watch the storage unit. The next thing that we saw really surprised us. All of a sudden what looked like a screwdriver was shoved through the metal wall of the storage unit. The person inside of the unit was trying to dig his way out. Whenever the genius inside realized that a screwdriver was not going to work, he decided to look for something else to help him get out of the unit. His next weapon of choice was a wooden back scratcher (he may not have been the most brilliant person ever). He jimmied around with the wooden back scratcher but was not getting too far with it. Next he decided that my sister's curling iron would help him escape the unit.

As we watched (and waited for the police) we saw his hand finally reach outside of the unit, he had managed to free his hand from the bonds of storage unit-ness. The only problem with him having his hand outside, was that he had freed his hand roughly 2 feet above the latch that he was reaching for, and he could not reach the latch to free himself from its grasp. He then pulled back inside and began frantically to escape again, once more freeing his arm from the prison of storage. This time it appeared that he was going to get the latch, but once again my quick thinking allowed me to stall him for a moment. While his hand was sticking out of the unit, reaching for the latch I honked my horn-I imagine this scared the poop out of him, because he jerked his hand back inside the unit VERY quickly (which we later learned cut his hand up VERY badly). After a few silent moments his hand emerged once again, this time with a very determined effort and his mind was set stedfastly on his goal...FREEDOM. Finally the inevitable happened and he was able to unlatch the door.

The door was now open but he quickly shut the door. My first thought was "Shootout at the OK Corral." I thought he was now going to be loading the gun that he had or that he was going to make a break for our car or something. So in the most heroic voice that I could muster I stammered to Summer, lay your seat down and hide, just in case he decided that he wanted to shoot at us (I will admit, I learned that from a TV show). Then the door opened again and I could see him struggling with something, like he was trying to take something with him.

Now if you remember, I said that their was hardly room to get IN the unit, let alone put something else in the unit...this guy had aparently been in the unit, and was storing his bicycle in there as well. He was pulling his bicycle out of the unit. He then proceeded to get on the bike and ride off like nothing happened. He crossed the street and headed straight for the open field across the street. Just as he was getting to roughly the middle of the field the police showed up (better late than never). One car headed after the biker and one officer went with us to the unit.

We told him what had happened, and what we had seen and then the cool part...watching those CSI marathons really helped. The police started doing what they do on TV, putting on gloves, checking for fingerprints, taking DNA samples from the blood that the man poured all over the place, getting the pieces of skin left behind from yanking his arm through the sharded metal wall. It was AWESOME...afterwards.

We told the officer what the man looked like: Grey shirt, navy blue shorts, a hat rough hair, very dirty/bloody, blue bike.

The officer said that they had caught a man and they were going to need us to get in the car and go with him to try to identify the man that they caught (Summer and I high-fived...we were going to ride in the cop car). He asked if the man was kind of chubby, and we told him that he was very small (which apparently means that the man that they caugth was chubby, so that was the wrong answer, so no police car ride...BUMMER!

In the end, what should have been a 5 minute stop at the storage unit, ended up being a 2 hour stop.

After the police had left, my sister was beginning to look to see if anything was taken, and she saw a bag, remembering that Summer was looking for a bag, she pulled it out and asked if it was the bag she was looking for, because Megan did not recognize it. It was not Summer's, and then Megan realized that this was the man's bag. We called the police officer back to get the bag, and he looked through it. Inside were some of my t-shirts (that jerk) and the lock that he had broken, the makings of some cigarettes and some other stuff. The guy apparently had left in such a hury that he forgot his bag...sorry guy.

As we were getting ready to leave, the owner of the storage units showed up and we gave him a run down of the situation, and all he had to say was, "Bummer." Next I asked if he had some locks that we could have to replace the ones that were cut, so that he didn't come back to get his bag-which was now being put into an official evidence bag (AWESOME!). The owner guy said, "sure, they cost $10 a piece."

WHAT!?!?!? A guy who broke into our storage unit, was living there in the units that you own, you have not even said "sorry" and now you are going to charge us money for another set of locks? I wanted to punch the guy. Oh well, at least we will have locks again. This time we got those circular locks that cannot be cut, or at least the jerk that owns the place says.

We then headed to my parents house for a cookout and now we are going to make sure that our packing is finished so that we can leave for the airport at 3:00 AM Sunday.

This seems like it will be an AWESOME trip!

Scotty

P.S. We never found the dumb box...