The return of the horseless honkman

I suppose uncool attracts uncool. In this case, I am talking about my husband whom I will call “Bun”—as in one, not two.

Although I think Bun is cooler than I’ll ever be, he does have his moments. Actually, some of them are more like years. Well years is what it would seem like after he pulled a particularly “uncool” stunt with a kid who frequently visited our block.

Bun and I moved onto our street when we were in our twenties. This meant that Bun still had a little too much energy to spend on stupidly annoying things like showing a 16 year-old boy just who the alpha male was in our neighborhood.

Back then, a very nice lady and her two teenage daughters lived across the street from us. These two daughters had a habit of smoking with their friends on their pitch black front porch every Friday night.

Sure it was a little creepy, but it was none of our business, I would tell Bun. They weren’t harming anyone or anything. Although, their one friend, the previously mentioned 16 year old, would take it upon himself to honk at the stroke of 10 p.m. each eve of Saturday. And it wasn’t just one honk.

It was exactly six staccatos followed by one extra long note, rounding out into what seemed to be an eight-count measure.  “Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!” He’d repeat this cadence four times—a full phrase, which was followed by laughter and screeching as he pealed off down our street.

Unfortunately, our bedroom faced this side of the street with only a single-paned window shielding us from the festival of smoke and horns.  Sadly a recurring coincidence, 10 p.m. was also around the time when Bun  would fall asleep.

I must share that Bun is slightly dramatic when it comes to interrupted sleep and pain.

With each passing Friday, we were beginning to feel as if we were living through Groundhog Day Hell. Even Bun got into a routine. He would pop up in bed like a Jack-in the-Box, waving his hands like some sort of modern interpretive dancer. “Oh why? Why? Oh God Why?” he’d ask no one in particular, his face crinkled,  practically crying.

I admit, it was an unnerving five minutes and a bad way to start each weekend, but what could we do? For the next three months, the smoke, the dark, the horn-telegraph sequence, the Bun-in-the-Box performance, the laughter, the screech was what I’d come to expect—and dread every Friday night.

But on month four, something in Bun snapped. As the first horn measure was being laid out, Bun flung himself out of bed, ran to the kitchen and grabbed the industrial strength flashlight—you know the kind you’d use in a search-and-rescue effort or to scare off a large bear while camping.

We were experiencing the second eight-count of the honk symphony when I heard the front door hit the wall from being opened with such force.

Suddenly, the horn stopped and everything went eerily quiet. No laughter, no tires burning rubber, nothing. I noticed that the outline of our bedroom window was bathed in unusual luminosity. The light was similar to the kind the police use when they’ve pulled someone over.

I crawled under the window and cracked the drape back ever so slightly to find the honker perpetrator staring at the steering wheel where his hands were locked and frozen. The large scrutinous spotlight still blazed in through the passenger’s side of his car.

Funny, the boy was staring at the steering wheel but the light wasn’t piercing through his windshield. I didn’t see any officers. Had the police pulled him over from our side of the street? Were they in front of our house? We would have definitely heard the sirens.

How could the light be shining from the side? The side. Think. Hmmm. The side, as in across the street. Wait a minute, was it coming from the room next to ours, as in our house? Was the light really coming from our house?!

I crawled from the window, around our bed and peeked my head around the door frame to find a sight that still haunts me to this day.

“Honey?” I whispered gruffly.

“Don’t worry,” he answered triumphantly over his shoulder. “That kid’s never gonna bother us again. I taught him a lesson. I showed him.”

There, in all of his 6’1, 155-pound glory stood my husband at the threshold of our opened front door, wearing nothing but tighty whiteys, thankfully and firmly in place. He was aiming that fluorescent yellow flashlight the size of a miner’s hat at honky kid.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear Bun was going to launch himself into the sky at any minute. The only thing missing was his cape. He certainly held the stance with the elbow bent and one hand on the hip.

Did he show that kid? You betcha. In fact, he showed everyone else that was across the street that night.

And as for lesson learned. It’s true that honky kid didn’t return the next week. He must have been on vacation because he made sure to come back every week thereafter. Even when those girls moved away a year later.

We heard from that kid for years and I swear I still hear him occasionally.  I can imagine him now. He’s probably about 26 and married with two kids.

I bet you he piles his family into the car and visits our street every now and then, honking and hoping for old Captain Underpants to shine his light just one more time.

Uncool, but at least in runs in the family.

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