Jeepers! Peepers!

KITTEN 013
KITTEN 013 (Photo credit: John of Wales)

Introduction

This is the story of a peeper, a peeping tom who chose us as a subject of study. Read on!

A small ground floor flat (apartment, if American) is what we loved in and lived in. As a newly married couple in our mid-twenties, we both worked for “computer companies” where we “did computers”.

It is important to understand the layout of the flat.

It isn’t actually, but it’s more interesting (to me) to say that it is. The layout is, I mean. Is interesting, I mean.

(We’ve been through this before, the flat / apartment thing, so try not to get confused. Read this post first, where I threw in not just a reference to this, at that point unwritten, post, but a description of the flat.)

The Scene

Now, here is a drawing of the flat.  < Note: There isn’t one… >

Note the following elements.

  • Shower – with window
  • Bedroom
  • Cat droppings room
  • Landlord’s generously donated dining table in the corner of the cat droppings room
  • Window next to the table
  • Front door. This is actually the landlord’s side door.

Note also the elements not shown.

  • The four chairs that matched the dining table
  • The beds

The kitchen layout is slightly wrong, but I can’t be bothered to fix it, and anyway the kitchen doesn’t appear in this story. (It does in another story, though, albeit in a rather understated way, so you may as well memorize the general layout now and save later.)

Note inhabitants of this flat consisted of two IT people. The male member (relax, it is not that kind of story), was often not home for long periods of time. This led to another amusing little incident that I shall save for another day. {EDIT 2015: Here it is.}

Right, so the scene is set. When the curtain goes up, the couple is discovered at the table. I am sitting in a chair that faces the window, which is about 2 feet away from me. The window has glass panes that use striped blocks that act as privacy filters. If the light is right you can see shapes but no details can be seen. Dinner has been completed. There is no TV, radio or any other form of entertainment.

My young wife is sitting in the chair with the window on her right. The table is spread with paper, expense forms, cash memos, travel expense vouchers.

The Action

Me: What time is it? Hell, it is 1:30 in the morning. Damn, these expense claims!

She: How long will it take you to finish this?

Me: At least another hour, I think. There’s 8 weeks worth of travel to be accounted for. Help me sort the memos by type, then we’ll sort each pile by date. That should make it easier to fill out these f…ing expense forms.

Silence as we worked through the paper for the next 20 minutes.

Then I look up to find a pile of memos and I freeze. Clearly to be seen through the privacy glass of the window is the form of a white round neck t-shirt, encasing a neck and chest and above that a head rising upwards from underneath the window.

Me: What is that?!

The shape sank away quickly.

She: What is it?

Me <pushing back chair, violently> There’s someone just outside the window looking in at us.

As I say this, the form rises again. She yells “Oh my god! I see him too!”.

I rush to the front door, shouting loudly, “Who’s there?” alternately in Hindi and Bengali. I unlatch the door and rush out. At the back of the house I see a white vested, lungi-clad man jumping over the wall and racing away. I stand there, panting, with my wife behind me.

She: It’s no use, now. He’s got away.

We come back in, shut and lock the door.

She: You have got to speak the landlord when you go to give him the rent tomorrow.

The next scene is at the landlord’s front door. I give him the rent and tell him about the incident.

He: Yes, I thought I heard some yelling. I meant to warn you about that guy, you know. I realise you guys are young and newly married, but you should be more careful in the flat. It is on the ground floor you know.

Me: Oh, so this guy is a regular, then?

He: Oh yes, I’ve thrown hot water at him a couple of times, but he does not learn.

The lesson learned is this.

If you’re young, new married and deeply in love, and live a life of bliss in a ground floor flat, make sure you get curtains that properly protect your privacy.

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This Post Has 21 Comments

  1. mindfulmagpie

    Oh my goodness. Two innocent newlyweds minding their own business. That same thing happened to me when the very night , 13 years ago, when I moved into the house where I now live. I was in the bathroom which was much larger and more luxurious than I had had before, undressing after a hard day moving. I felt very free, as though I were on a big adventure, moving as I had into an unincorporated area of our county, where there were not yet streetlights. Suddenly something made me look up at the large frosted glass window, and SOMEBODY WAS LOOKING AT ME!!!! Yikes!!! I screamed for my husband who ran out the front door and across the front yard where he ran into an enormous spider web that covered his face, allowing the person of interest to get away. We never who it was!!!

    1. TheLastWord

      That must have been quite a shock!
      We never did catch him, but we became more wary. In any case, our time in that place ended in less than a year. I have some good memories of our time there, but it was really not a long term place, what with Cantankerous Cats and Perverted Peepers!

  2. spunkybong

    Oh God, that must have been scary. There should have been an adult version of ‘Home alone’, a sort of do-it-yourself thing, in case of peeping toms. You have a refreshing style. 😀

    1. TheLastWord

      Yeah I quite impressed myself by rushing out like that. Thanks!

  3. skinnyuz2b

    If only you had figured out what part of the fence he jumped over you could have dumped all your cat droppings to welcome him with a soft landing. Or you could have put a row of potholder looms under your window to pierce his (hopefully) bare feet.
    All in all I guess the peeping was really your fault for being such a young, attractive, and interesting couple. Sometimes it pays to be boring.

    1. TheLastWord

      I suppose we were stupid in not getting heavier curtains than the ones we could afford.

  4. saurabham

    Not my story but about my friend….he came one day and told us that thief came last night in his house and stole his radio..His window was open and thief used long handled net and hook to get his radio…adult part of this story was he never realized it till morning and theft happened in his BED ROOM. He was newly married .That night they were in birth suite 🙂

    1. TheLastWord

      Whoa! Poor chap! Btw what is a “birth suite”?

  5. Dan

    Go back to your own country and take your family with you.

    1. anjanadee

      Dan,
      Which cave did you crawl out of? Are you just another garden variety Neanderthal or a white supremacist or a Trumpeteer or all of the above?
      Go away!!