Home Alone

Cell phone in hand, I pressed my body against the tiled bathroom floor and peeked through the bottom corner of the window. They were still there. Three trucks, parked in the driveway in such a way that blocked my one route of escape. I was trapped. I was alone, and I was hungry. I had no idea what these vehicles were doing here but one thing was certain: none of them were Bon Me.

This was not the way that things should have gone, in fact, it was the ideal set-up. My parents were away for the weekend, and I had the house to myself. Despite promising my mother that I wouldn’t touch her white wine or ruin the hardwood floors, I was more than prepared to throw a rager with the three people that I still kept in contact with from high school. But the surprise guests outside of my house was making that difficult.

But no. I would not have a party, instead I would stage a low-budget reenactment of Home Alone. Except, unlike Macaulay Culkin, I had neither the patience to set up a complex series of Rube Goldberg booby traps nor the ability to pull off bangs.

What I did have was an assortment of dirty dining utensils that I was supposed to run through the dishwasher, a panic button that my dad told me was linked to the police department, but which I suspected was just the garage door opener, and a half-empty bottle of Chardonnay.

And I had promised not to touch the Chardonnay. Things were looking desperate.

“Were you expecting anyone?” I texted my mother after noticing the trucks parked in the driveway, “a random man is walking around our backyard.”

She did not text back. So I had no explanation for why a man in cargo pants and a white t-shirt was trespassing on my property and barricading my car in the driveway. And as I live in Middle of Nowhere, CA, I was cut off from the rest of civilization, I needed my car: the nearest Starbucks was over four miles away.

Maybe I can escape on foot, I thought to myself, opening the fridge and grabbing the raspberry vinaigrette. I was panicked, but I wasn’t so panicked that I couldn’t eat a salad.

But then, about ten minutes later, the man in cargo pants rang the doorbell, and I’m no Emily Post, but I’m pretty that social norms dictate that you knock first and then case the house.

So this scared me. I was starting to think that this was not “Home Alone” but “The Purge,” where the masked villains ring the doorbell only to later break in and murder all of the supporting characters.

And this thought only increased my alarm, because not only was I certain that I would be killed off first, but also I remembered that a sequel was coming out, and there was nothing that I could do to stop “The Purge: Anarchy” from reaching the public.

So I didn’t open the door. Instead, I relocated to my safe-place and continued to text for help from the comfort of the bathroom floor. I was debating whether or not to text the police when the trucks began to pull away.

And it was only then, as the trucks pulled out of my driveway, that I was able to read what was written on them: ANIMAL CONTROL.

And I suddenly felt very silly. Because in addition to my mother I had texted all of my siblings and extended family for help and guidance. And now I would have to explain to them that what I assumed was a gang of robbers casing my house for a burglary in broad daylight was actually just Animal Control looking for a rampant cow.

And that is what happened: a farm animal was on the loose.

And the worst thing about all of this that it wasn’t my own imagination that had misled me. All of my delusions were taken directly from the delusions of Hollywood screenwriters. And not even good screenwriters, mediocre ones. As all of the movies that had induced my short-lived paranoia probably average one and a half stars. My paranoia was induced by a series of B-movies. My “Home Alone” sequel would have gone straight to DVD.

To think, if I had only been inspired by better movies I might have thought to open the door and assist Animal Control on their cattle hunt, or better, invite them to my house party. Who knows, they might have even brought their own beef.

Or maybe they would have just stolen the TV.

Nicole J. Levin ’15, an FM editor, is a government concentrator in Dunster House. Her column will appear every two weeks this summer.