I am. Not in the traditional, black-silk-pajama-wearing, breaking-into-high-security-mansions, art-stealing way. I'm a ninja of the mind. Ok, of my mind.
Which is why, when I couldn't get into my yard because my gate was inexplicably broken as if after having worked perfectly well all weekend it decided it was French and therefore to go on strike, I decided I could scale fences. Like a NINJA.
The thing is, I don’t like to be kept from things I want to do. And the other day I really REALLY wanted to sit in my yard. Have you seen my yard?
It includes contemplative dogs enjoying lavender.
It was nice, it was warm, it was Tuesday....you know what, the why doesn’t matter. The point is, my gate was as broken as the European financial system and I couldn’t get in, no matter how many times I stamped my feet and pushed on the door and rattled the handle and yelled at the fence and tantrumed in the early evening. Same with the banks.
For a second I considered just going back inside and waiting a while before trying again. You know, the “turn it off and then turn it back on” method I use on everything from my laptop to the blender. I mean, this always works: my laptop always goes back on, the blender always makes me a margarita. 1 + 1 = 2. But I knew.
I was going to have to climb over that fence and open that wretched gate from the inside. Just a like a ninja.
No big whip, right? It’s only like a 6-foot fence. Which by the way, you cannot vault yourself over by just standing on a kitchen chair. Lesson 1, learned.
Sitting outside my gate on the aforementioned kitchen chair, ignoring the people walking by wondering why I was sitting on a kitchen chair in the middle of the sidewalk, I of course realized I needed a ladder. And it turns out, someone to hold it because it turns out I had to stand almost at the very top of the ladder to swing myself up and over, one leg on the ladder, one leg dangling over the fence, balanced on my hands in a bizarre fence-beam routine, and then lower myself down (thereby shocking every gym teacher I've ever had since I never could do a chin up) onto an outdoor storage cabinet before dismounting onto the patio. Lessons 2-6 learned in quick succession.
Lesson 7 is that a victory dismount pose is less effective when your friend can’t see it because she is on the other side of a traitorously locked gate.
Lesson 8 is that the evening is a little bit lovelier and the wine tastes a little bit better when you have to work a little bit harder to get it. So go get it.
