I’ve always been good friends with one of my cousins, Cole, who’s the same age I am. The two of us were…not quite inseparable, but we always did get along very well together, and were often found together, both in school (as we’d always wound up in the same class together throughout elementary school) and outside of it.
When we were 12 and in the 6th grade, I was hanging out with Cole on a Friday afternoon around the later part of of May, and we were psyched at the start of the weekend. We’d wound up at his house, since he didn’t live too far from me, and at one point my mom called to say that our grandpa was in the hospital. While the issue with our grandpa wasn’t expected to be life-threatening, he was being kept at the hospital overnight for observation, and both my parents and Cole’s were planning on staying with him and grandma at the hospital (since my mom and her sister were the two of their sibling who lived close by). I was told that I was given the OK to stay at Cole’s house for the night, with Cole’s 15 year old brother Hunter being “in charge” while our parents were out.
This was fine by us. I got along well enough with Hunter, and he was never the bossy older brother/cousin that some of my other friends said they had to put up with. We ordered out for pizza, and enjoyed goofing off as boys that age tend to do. At around 9 or so, there was a knock at the front door, and Cole went to answer it. I was a bit curious as to who it could be at that time of the night, and so I watched from a ways back. At the door were two older guys. They said that they were with the city and that they were investigating reports about the water pressure supposedly being bad in the neighborhood. They asked Cole if his parents were home, and when Cole said they were “unavailable” at that moment (which we were told to say to strangers if our parents weren’t home) the guys started asking a bunch of questions about how the water pressure was in the house and if they could come inside to check. Hunter came over at that point and politely told the guys that the water pressure was fine and perhaps they should move on to check on other homes in the neighborhood. The guys seemed reluctant to leave but turned and walked away after Hunter started closing the door.
After the door was shut we looked at each other and shrugged, but didn’t think too much of it after that and went back to goofing off. Eventually, we decided to go to bed. Cole and Hunter shared a bedroom, and we all agreed that I’d sleep in there with them, rather than me hitting the sack on the couch or something like that, so that we could talk while we fell asleep, and Hunter grabbed a sleeping bag out of their camping supplies for me. When we got into their bedroom, they stripped down to their briefs, and I remembered Cole had mentioned to me once a while back that they had started sleeping in just their underwear. Since I hadn’t originally planned on staying the night, I hadn’t brought anything with me from home as far as overnight stuff, but since I wasn’t in the mood to sleep in my clothes, I stripped down to my briefs as well, though I felt a bit embarrassed, even though we were all guys there and I knew they wouldn’t say anything or be judgemental.
They climbed into their beds and I quickly crawled into the sleeping bag, and after talking for a while about random stuff we eventually fell asleep. Early the next morning I got up because I had to pee, and so I quietly got out of the sleeping bag and went and did my business in the bathroom. On the way back to the bedroom I heard something in the family room, which was on the opposite end of the house from the bedrooms and particular bathroom I was using. I didn’t pay too much attention to it at the time, thinking it must be either Cole or Hunter, until I got back into the bedroom and realized that both of them were still in there. Trying not to panic, I woke them and told them that I thought someone was in the house. They quietly followed me, and the moment we walked into the family room we saw the two guys from the night before in there, and it was rather clear they were robbing the place. One of them started moving towards us as he pulled out a wicked-looking knife.
The three of us promptly raced to the front door, somehow managed to get it unlocked and open, and we fled outside. As luck would have it a cop was driving by at that particular moment. We quickly flagged him down and told him about the two guys in the house. The cop called for backup, and within a couple of minutes several other cops were there, and they proceeded to enter the house, and after some searching they caught the two guys. The cops figured out that the two guys must have entered from a window in the laundry room that had a broken latch, and had probably targeted that house because, while it wasn’t empty, they’d probably realized that there were no adults there and figured that if we discovered them, we could be more easily dealt with than adults.
To add insult to injury, while we were waiting outside while the cops searched the house (both to get the two guys and make sure that there was no one else with them), some of the neighbors came out to see what the commotion was about, and this included some kids who went to the same school as Cole and me, including a few who were in our 6th grade class with us. It was during that time that the three of us realized that we’d never had the chance to get dressed, so, just like in the stereotypical nightmare, we had to stand outside in full view of everyone in just our briefs for what seemed liked forever before being allowed back inside. When we went back to school on Monday, Cole and I had to put up with more than a bit of snickering, stares, and ribbing for the next few weeks until school ended for the summer.