Southern Hospitality, sort of

 Southern Italy, that is.

Today’s Washington Post brings us a story of a man who drank too much, and then did the responsible thing and took the bus home.  To bad it was the wrong bus, it wasn’t his home, and police had to come wake the guy up when the actual homeowners found him asleep in their bed:

Bob Breiner walked upstairs to the master bedroom and flipped on a lamp. Less than two feet away: a man he’d never seen, wrapped in blankets, sound asleep. On the floor were shoes, socks and pants. Earlier, the man had apparently helped himself to a crab cake from the refrigerator.

“The man had been drinking,” said Montgomery police spokeswoman Lucille Baur, “and returned to what he thought was his home and climbed into bed and went to sleep.”

He had missed by eight miles, apparently getting off at the wrong bus stop on his way home to Damascus. Gingerly, he made his way down the Breiners’ stairs, holding the banister in one hand and his shoes and socks in the other.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” the Breiners recalled him saying. “By the way, you have a very comfortable bed.”

When the homeowners found out the intruder had no police records and had recently lost his job, they declined to press charges. (The front door was unlocked when he entered, so crab cake theft was really his only crime)

But here comes my favorite part:

 

 Joanne Breiner, who teaches English as a second language at Roberto Clemente Middle School, headed into her kitchen. Into a plastic grocery bag she packed a container of homemade chicken soup, homemade cookies and some spare ribs, giving the food to officers and telling them to pass it on to the man.

“I think her mom would have been disappointed if we didn’t feed the intruder,” said Bob Breiner, noting the manners of his Sicilian-born wife and mother-in-law.

 Things could have ended up differently, had the intruder stumbled in a few hours later. Bob Breiner, a podiatrist, practices krav maga, a form of martial arts taught by theIsraeli army. “We use a lot of elbows to the head, knees to the stomach and kicks to the groin,” he said.


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I'm a suburban amateur chef and professional writer who hates grocery shopping. Go figure.

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