That Time That Toby Totally Told on Me.

I one hundred percent was not going for alliteration up there, but what can you do?

So I used to do this thing where I would sneak out in the middle of the night and go off on little adventures. I would go for drives with my friends, go to Mac's, hang out, walk around, go to the beach. Fairly harmless stuff, but it was awesome because it was the middle of the night. I did it a lot.

My bedroom was in the basement and there was a door down there that lead to the backyard, so I didn't have to worry about going upstairs and risk waking up my parents. I would just go out the back door, through the gate, through the carport, down the driveway, and then either to the top or bottom of the street to meet whomever I was meeting to go off on my adventure. It was a great setup.

My stepfather was a Teamster and left for work really early in the morning - 4:30 am. My goal was to be home before Stepfather left for work. Many times, I was tip-toeing through the carport and I would hear the shower running.

This one time when I came home, THE BASEMENT DOOR WAS LOCKED.

I could hear Stepfather in the shower, so it was guaranteed that my mum was up making his lunch, so there was no way I was going to be able to come in the kitchen door. I had no choice but to come in one of the basement windows.

We lived in this older house and the windows in the basement were wood and didn't open very freely. The one in the family room was the easiest to open and didn't have a screen on it, so I used that one. As I was attempting to open the window, it was sticking and scraping and making much more noise than I wanted it to. As this was happening, our Sheltie/Poodle mix, Toby, discovered me and started barking at me. I whispered, "Toby, it's ME!" to try to quiet him down, but he would not lay off. It wasn't until I was in the house and he could smell me that he calmed down. I managed to close the window silently and make it to my room. By this time, my mother heard me and called to me asking what the dog was barking at. I told her it was me, that I had gotten up to go to the bathroom and he freaked out. She gave me this weird look from the top of the stairs like she didn't believe me. It had been very lightly drizzling outside. She said, "Let me feel your hair." Of course I knew I was busted, so I explained myself and earned a week's worth of grounding.

Thanks a lot dog.