Let's set the scene. We live in a house, on a hill, in the woods, on a dirt road in a semi-rural area. There are houses around within sight, but separated by trees; its a quiet, relaxed place to live. Last night about one a.m. Sweet Enemy and I were awakened by the blaring of a horn. At first we thought it might be a car alarm, but it didn't have that insistent feel. This was different. The blasts were rhythmic, but not perfectly even with long blasts and equally long pauses between them.
Now, where we live is almost silent, especially in the summer when the trees are leafed, so this was odd as well as annoying. After about five minutes I decided to investigate. I threw on some clothes, grabbed my maglite and went outside. I determined that it was coming from the next house down the hill, a house about 50m away that's owned by a deaf guy. Well, that would explain it, I thought.
I trudged down the hill in the moonlight wondering what I was actually going to do when I got to the house (I was also wondering why his neighbor hadn't come over yet. The horn must have been maddening at that distance). I could only hope that the guy had one of those doorbells with a flashing light, otherwise we were going to be treated to a car horn contata until the battery ran down. As I got up to the cars in the driveway, I found the source of the horn, a minivan with Georgia plates and it's lights on. I had a feeling I should look in the car to see if there was anybody in there.
And there was!
Ok. Here we go, I thought. I walked up to the blaring minivan and, against all reason, pounded on the window. I paused for a moment to reflect on my stupidity, then looked in. Slumped against the steering wheel, with his face on the horn was an adult male. I took a breath, opened the door and touched the guy on his shoulder. He awakened instantly and sat up; the horn blessedly stopped. He was confused, but not overly so and there was no smell of alcohol at all. I mouthed "are you okay" to him. He smiled and nodded. I asked again, he replied in the affirmative, then we traded thumbs-ups and I walked back to our house.
It had been the movement of his head while breathing in sleep that had caused the rhythmic horn blasts. SE and I speculated for a while as to why he was sleeping in his car, but in the long run, it doesn't matter.
2 comments:
Wow, that is not something you run into every day (well, night). That was a bit of an adventurous approach, but not overly rash given the circumstances.
*Veird*....It's also good this guy's got some good neighbors who'll at least check out what's happening.
Good on ya!
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