Last weekend, Kit distracted me with a joke on our way out, and I (displaying all the intellectual capacity of a buttered parsnip) locked my keys inside.
What he said was, “What’s genealogy?” and I started to explain, and he interrupted with, “No, duh! It’s a joke. I know what it is.”
So I played along and said, “Okay. I don’t know. What is genealogy?”
And he said, “It’s when you get anaphylactic shock from a guy in a lamp!”
I laughed. He was pleased about that because, he then informed me, “Some people think it’s called geneology, which isn’t even a word! But if it was, it ought to mean the science of genes. But even though all the other sciences are ‘ologies’, gene science is called ‘genetics,’ which probably should be pronounced ‘jean-ticks,’ not ‘jenny-ticks.’ But, anyway, if you thought the word was ‘geneology’, then then my joke wouldn’t be funny.”
It was about then I realised my keys were missing. “Fluffy bunnies!” I exclaimed, “I’ve locked the blistering keys inside.”
“I don’t remember you saying that,” Kit interrupted.
“…or something like that,” I conceded to mollify his righteous indignation.
And then Kit said, “I suppose I will just have to rescue us!”
Due to uncooperative topography, we live on the third floor on one side of the building and the first floor on the opposite side. As we circumnavigated the building, looking for a way in, we spotted a window I had left open.
I started thinking about drainpipes. I weigh about twice as much as you should if you intend to climb one any higher than you would like to fall, but they could easily support Kit’s weight. As soon as I said ‘drainpipe,’ Kit started experimenting. After undertaking a short course in Inventive Ways to Fall Down, he finally was able to wedge himself in between a pipe and the wall, and shimmy up that way. He was off like shot. He had it all planned out.
“I had it all planned out,” he explained, “First I climbed the drainpipe at the bottom, which was pretty easy. Then I got to the first roof, and I had to find the next drainpipe. It wobbled, but I climbed it, and I wasn’t even scared.”
“Then I had to jump onto the window sill. That was the bit where you were running around in circles screaming, ‘Don’t fall!’ Then I chewed a big hole in the window screen and jumped inside. I climbed the bookshelf by the door for a good view, and saw your keys on the couch. I had to jump onto a chair to get down from the bookshelf, because you weren’t there to help me down. Then I climbed the couch and got your keys.”
Back on the ground, I was still trying to work out how Kit was going to reach the door handle when my keys hit me on the head.