"YOU SCARED ME!"

“Good afternoon,” Charlie said in a pleasant voice after opening his door.

I was still steamed about an incident that happened the day before and I let him know about it — again! “Charlie, YOU SCARED ME!”

“What happened?” I know you wanna know.

In order to tell you what happened, I have to tell you what led up to it.

Lamar! That handsome, kind, mild-mannered neighbor of mine, that’s what! Lamar is what happened! Last week, at the top of four porch steps down to a large, flat stone landing, Lamar stood tossing a ball for his dog Tux to chase when he flung himself off the porch. He never hit a step on his way down and landed on his right shoulder blade. I like how their daughter Jenn describes it. “Picture something like Fred Flintstone with his fingers stuck in a bowling ball, or a really short Superman flight.”

“I rolled over to my hands and knees and yelled, ‘HELP! HELP!’” Lamar told me.

Rosie was in the kitchen and heard him. “I went out and helped him get up and into the house and to his chair.”

Lamar thought he’d be okay and didn’t want to go to the ER. “Every time we go there, we end up waiting six or seven hours to be seen,” Rosie said. But Lamar wasn’t okay. By that night the pain was really bad. The next day Rosie took him to the chiropractor because it takes too long to get in to see the doctor. The chiropractor wouldn’t touch him without an x-ray. They called the doctor for an order for an x-ray and Rosie took him to Towanda Hospital. Lamar thought he might’ve broken his shoulder, but he didn’t. He fractured six ribs!

“What’s the difference between cracked ribs and fractured?” you ask.

Good question. I asked Copilot, my AI buddy. “Cracked ribs is a term commonly used to describe a less severe break, where the bone is cracked but not completely broken. Fractured ribs is a term that can refer to any type of break in the rib, whether it's a crack, a partial break, or a complete break.”

Needless to say, Lamar is laid up for a while and can’t get his mail or Charlie’s mail for him, either. My husband Mike and I quickly stepped in and took over mail duty.

Charlie doesn't move too fast these days. I ring the doorbell and wait. Usually, within a minute or two, I’ll hear him moving around. If I don’t, I ring the doorbell again or I’ll ring the old, school bell that rings on the porch above his kitchen door. He says he can hear that one inside the house, too. Sometimes he’s napping and doesn’t hear the bells. That’s when I’ll call his phone. He’ll hear that and wake up.

This week, I can hear something inside the house running as I approach the door. A vacuum sweeper maybe? I rang the inside bell and waited. The machine didn’t turn off and I couldn’t hear Charlie coming to the door. I rang the inside doorbell again and leaned on the school bell for good measure. His slowness in answering is not unusual. I wait and listen and look around.

I ring both bells again and wait. Still no Charlie. I’d think he was napping but whatever machine that was running was still running. I call his phone. It rings and rings. No answer. Mike and the girls are on the golf cart waiting for me to deliver Charlie’s mail to him.

“Mike,” I called. “Something’s wrong! Charlie isn’t answering and I can hear something running in the house.”

Mike and I go to another door. The inside door is open and the screen door was fastened with a piece of wire. I could open it enough to yell, “CHARLIE!” through the crack.

Still no Charlie — but I heard a new sound — someone was hitting something metallic with something metallic! “CHARLIE! CHARLIE!” I call through the crack with renewed panic. I’ve seen enough movies to know that when someone’s in trouble, they pick up a wrench and beat on the walls of the ship. I was envisioning Charlie falling or having some kind of episode while he’s running the sweeper. I just couldn’t figure out what he was beating on or what he was beating with or why he couldn’t answer me. But those answer would come when we got inside.

I tried to use a stick to flip the wire from the hook but it wasn’t budging. I yelled, “CHARLIE!” and this time a rap, rap, rap, was immediately returned, almost like he was answering my call. I didn’t feel like there was a lot of time to waste. We pulled on the handle and the door came open. I was afraid of what I’d find inside but in I went.

I quickly scan the living room. No body in the reclined recliner. No body on the living room floor.

The machine sound was coming from the kitchen. I turned the corner and there stood Charlie. He wasn’t laying on the floor. He was standing at the counter; an electric grinder was running. Charlie used the spoon in his hand to move the contents away from where it was piling up under the grinder and rapping the spoon on the side of the pan.

“CHARLIE!” I yelled, but now I’m not panicked. He was wearing over-the-ear hearing protection, earmuffs, and couldn’t hear me. I stepped closer, cupping my hands around my mouth, and yelled again. This time he heard me.

“Coming!” he said and turned toward the kitchen door (which was the opposite way from where I was coming in.)

“CHARLIE! I’M OVER HERE!”

“Huh?” he says, turns around and sees me.

“How did you get in?” he asked after he shut the grinder off and took off his hearing protection.

“I pulled the door open,” I told him.

“I thought that was secure.”

I’m standing there thinking, that is beside the point. “CHARLIE!” I exclaimed. “YOU SCARED ME!” His face was blank. “You didn’t answer the doorbell. You didn’t answer the phone. And you didn’t answer when I was knocking and yelling in the door!”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought that door was secure.”

I tried again. “Charlie, it’s a good thing I could get in! I thought you needed help.”

I gave him his mail and left.

The next day, when Charlie opened his door to my doorbell ringing, he pleasantly said, “Good afternoon.”

“CHARLIE! YOU SCARED ME! You need to give me or Lamar a key so we can get in if you’re ever in trouble.”

“Do you know how old I am?” he asked.

“Ninety-eight,” I guess.

“Ninety-nine,” he says. “But most people don’t agree with the way I count age.”

Charlie counts from the moment of conception and adds nine months to his age. Lamar figures that he’s closer to ninety-seven.

I stood there and snapped photo after photo of this wizened old face as Charlie once again told me the story of his two guardian angels, Gabriele and Gabriela.

“Look at me!” Charlie says. “I don’t go

to the doctors. I don’t take any medicine. But I’m ready to go! I hope I go tonight!”

I looked over to where Mike was waiting on the cart with Bondi and Raini. He could hear the conversation and was grinning at me. I know what he was thinking. “Better you than me.”

Charlie can talk — and talk and talk. You don’t like to be rude, but sometimes you just gotta walk away from him.

“In other words,” Mike said when I got back to the cart. “He doesn’t want any help.”

Charlie is reluctant to give anyone a key to his house. I guess it doesn’t matter in the long run. If I think he needs help, or Lamar thinks he needs help, we can always break a window.

The Kipp girls have been sending their dad get well boxes full of treats. One of the things Jenn sent was a Superman cape. “No more flights without this!” she advises.

While visiting with the Kipps, Rosie got to love on Bondi and Raini played with Tux. Lamar was holding Tux’s leash and I was holding Raini’s leash as they danced playfully around each other, tails wagging. I don’t know what happened but I knew something was happening. Raini got very still, her tail and hackles up as Tux sniffed her ear. That was it. Raini lit into him. But I was ready and held her back. Tux, to his good credit, backed off. I pulled a chair from the table near where we were standing and put it between them. When I could see nothing else was going to happen, I opened the door and told Raini, “Go outside.” She did, and sat there looking at me through the glass of the storm door.

“I don’t know what she was upset about,” I told Lamar. “But I could see she was getting upset.” If I had known it was going to go that far I would’ve sent her outside sooner.

“It’s okay, Raini,” Lamar spoke to her through the door. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

I’m really glad they weren’t upset about the episode.

And I'll be really, really glad when Lamar can resume checking on Charlie!