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How I Almost Got Arrested at My Grandfather's Funeral

OK, so I might be exaggerating just a bit.  We were never on the police's radar but it wasn't for lack of evidence.

So a bunch of us got together to try and help clean up Grandpa's house the morning of the viewing before my Grandfather's funeral.  We knew it was the only day we'd all be in town and we wanted to help out.  The bank owns the house now and there aren't many people still living close to take care of things like that.  We didn't want to leave that giant job to others because most of us knew we probably wouldn't make it back to town. The main goal was to clean out the kitchen before the food began to rot and organize some piles that we probably thought should go to Goodwill.  Plus, admittedly, many of us wanted to take one last look around before the state took the house back. 

So we picked up a key, went inside and remembered to put the key in a safe place so we wouldn't lose it in the clean up.  That safe place happened to be on the table.  It was all good until we went to leave several hours later and learned that in the course of our emptying drawers and sorting things, at least a dozen other identical keys had been found and had all been put on that same table with THE key.  And then when we went to leave, we picked up the key and locked the door.  Everyone thought that they'd tested the key that was picked up to make sure it was THE key before we locked the door and headed to the funeral home.

Only it wasn't THE key.  It was one of the other keys.

Cut forward to late that night after the viewing.  It's dark, we're tired, we're emotionally spent, and we stop back at Grandpa's house to pick up our things.  We put the key in the door and after approximately six-hundred repeated attempts to open the door, we realized that it was one of the other keys and not THE key.  THE key was still sitting inside on the dining room table.  (OK, we might have realized it a bit earlier, but we held out hope until attempt number six-hundred.)

Someone remembered that the lock on the kitchen window never really worked so I found a ladder in the garage and used it to climb up and open the window.


That part was easy enough.



But the getting in through that tiny window proved more problematic.



I tried at least half a dozen different ways to get through that window, but in every one of them, my, um... endowments, prevented me from successfully getting through the window.  I've never wanted a breast reduction so much in my life.



Also, let me just say that - hypothetically - when you're trying to break into your dead grandpa's house to get your stuff in the dead of night, one of the least helpful things is to have your partner in crime laughing hysterically, taking flash photos and alerting both the police and your neighbors to the illegal activity going on behind the bushes.  So a word of advice:  don't take my mother with you.  

Finally, we called my cousin, who claimed to have done this before, and he came with his non-breast-bearing-and-easily-smaller-than-mine body and slipped through the window.




All before the police showed up. Score!


And that, dear friends, is why it is better to be a boy than a girl.

I'm sure Grandpa enjoyed watching this scene from the Great Beyond. I aim to entertain.