Sorry, Wrong House

A man in Florida, who was apparently a little too lubricated, entered the wrong house, cooked himself a snack, and passed out on the couch.  He was discovered and arrested the next morning by the real owners. Luckily no-one was hurt, although I can't promise I'd be calm enough to just call the cops if I found a guy passed out on my couch.

I'd laugh at this if I hadn't been on the receiving end of just such an incident.  Well, OK, I did laugh a bit, even at the memory of what happened to me.

As I've said before, life at the language school I attended early in my Army life was a mixture of hormones, stress, and alcohol.  A lot of young people, under a lot of pressure, blew off a lot of steam with a lot of booze.

One Friday night, a night during which I must point out that I was stone cold sober, I went to bed early.  Imagine my surprise when I woke up at dawn on Saturday morning to go for a run, and found my classmate Peter sleeping at the foot of my bed!

Peter was dating one of the young women who lived down the hall from me.*  When she decided to go to sleep that night, she and her roommates kicked Peter out and sent his blind drunk butt home.  Peter lived in the barracks two buildings down the street from me, but his room was on the same floor and door number as mine.  Coincidentally, his bed in his barracks room was in the same place in the room as mine.  Hey, it's the Army, they're anything if not consistent.  He apparently left our floor, walked down three flights of stairs, wandered around a while, walked back up three flights of stairs, somehow got back on our floor, and then let himself into my room.  Apparently my roommate had gone out for a late night run and had left the door unlocked.  As drunk as he was, he thought he was in his own room.  He found his way to my bed on the far side of the room, and passed out.  Thank Cthulhu he went unconscious before he had a chance to undress.

So there I was, a 19 year old hooah kind of guy, waking up to go for a run down at the beach, and there's this hairy Italian guy sleeping in my bed!  I kicked him in the back a couple of times and demanded he explain himself.  To his credit, Peter immediately woke up and realized just how badly he'd screwed up.  We 'calmly' talked the situation over, and he left.

Thing is, our talking woke up one of my roommates, who heard me talking and initially thought I'd brought a girl home the night before.  Then he heard Peter's deep voice, and started freaking out because he was convinced I'd brought a guy home.  This was 1990, so that kind of thing was a no-no.  Luckily, Peter explained the whole thing on his way out, and my roommate and I never discussed it again.  Of course, within a few days, everyone in the company knew about it, but Peter was the object of attention, not me.  Well, mostly not me.

So let this be a lesson to you:  Always lock your door.  You never know who's going to come calling after having one too many.

*Yes, I lived in a co-ed dorm barracks.  I noticed this about 15 seconds after getting to my room the night I arrived from Basic when I saw one of my neighbors floating down the hallway in a negligee.  I knew at that moment that I loved the Army.