Ninja Week: Day 4/5

It wasn’t long before all the kids in my neighborhood got caught up in the ninja craze. I don’t know how many of them had ninja suits, but lots of them had different weapons and we were all sneaking around at night, playing pranks on neighbors and committing general acts of mischief.

One night about six of us, all up to no good, gathered next to a neighbor’s house trying to come up with a good prank to pull. Now unbeknown to me, a plan had already been hatched. A couple of the guys snuck around the front of the house, rang the doorbell, and ran the other way. It would have been nice if someone had let me in on the plan.

Thinking my friends were right around the corner, I walked around the corner of the house and saw a man wearing only a robe, standing on the front porch.

“Boy, did you just ring my doorbell?” he asked. It was a legitimate question. His doorbell had been rung, and I was the only person in sight. And, I was wearing a ninja suit. I shook my head.

“No, sir.”

“Come here,” he said. I did the opposite. Quickly.

A couple of the guys hid in between the large evergreen trees that ran next to the house. When the guy in the robe dashed by chasing me, at least one ran the other way. At that point, my robed-pursuer realized he was chasing more than one ninja. All of us dove into hiding spots and waited for the mans arrival.

“I see you over there!” the man shouted, shaking his fist. (See? I learned. Never give up a good hiding spot.) “I see you in that tree! I see you behind that bush! I see you behind that car!” For five minutes the guy shouted out random locations. None of us moved a muscle. Fortunately he never said, “I see you underneath that pigeon coup!” (That’s where I was.) The standoff was long and tense.

Without warning, the man began shaking each evergreen tree he passed by. It was only a matter of time before he hit one with a kid in it, which he soon did. The second he touched it — ZOOM — the kid made a break for it. I saw someone else drop from a tree and start running. I knew that was my cue. I hopped up and ran for my own backyard.

“I SEE YOU! I SEE ALL OF YOU!” the man screamed. All he saw of me was my backside. ‘cuz I was gone, brother. Fortunately for me I was the furthest from robe guy. I ran behind my neighbor’s shed, cleared my own chain link fence with a single hop … and discovered my back door was locked. I started to walk around to the front of the house when I saw … headlights.

The guy was in his car, parked in the street.

I immediately dropped to the ground and scootched over next to our chain link fence. dropped down to the base of our chain link fence, and laid very, very still. There really was no place for me to go at this point. All I could do was lie still until he left, which seemed like forever. A couple of times the man flashed his bright lights, but he never moved. Eventually he pulled his car back into his driveway, stood on his front porch for a few more minutes, and went back inside to continue doing whatever it was he was doing before he met us.