Skokie, IL – Friday nights in Skokie Illinois are generally reserved for Tuna Helper, a few Blue Hawaiian Bartles & Jaymes and coming to grips with the suffocating reality that your lawn isn’t as full as it was last season. The thinning grass an apt metaphor for your deteriorating health and balding scalp. But last Friday something extraordinary happened.

As two fully generic parents peered out into the darkness that shrouded their coveted cul-de-sac, something that had been the exclusive purveyor of joy in an otherwise hapless existence, an unknown vehicle with its headlights on pulled into their driveway. Though the vehicle was clearly turning around and the entire incident was finished in less than 5 seconds, the parent’s eyes grew wide…their minds sick with morbid fantasies.

Was the person lost? In trouble? Stealing recycling bins? Extracting confidential documents from the trash? Using the Wi-Fi without permission? Trying to buy drugs? Eating lawn clippings? Was it Nancy’s son who voted for Obama? Was it Obama?

 The possibilities endless. The speculation rampant. The excitement almost unbearable.

“You see that Hun?”
“We weren’t expecting anyone were we?”
“Sure weren’t…”
“Yep there they go”
“They pulled in…then pulled right out, wasn’t that something?”
“How about that though?”
“Wonder if that was Sherrie and Drew’s kid?”
“No he drives a Honda Fit that looked like a Chevy Malibu”
“Can you get your phone and search those? I think it was a Malibu”
“Get the binoculars while you’re at it! They might be back”
“Yep…that was something, no telling what that person was doing”
“Did you see the way they sat there for a second?”
“Sat there for a second, put the car in reverse and pulled right out”
“Could have been anything”

Three hours later the parents lay exhausted by the front window, another sexless night to cherish in rural Illinois.