It all began when I finally had the chance to buy my first house, I was now 29 with a good career it was time to find a home to raise my son (I assume you had your son then). The first house is exciting, perhaps more so then any other in your life, just because it's your first. My first house was beautiful to me, but like a lot of first houses it needed some repair and TLC before I moved my family in.
So after settling and officially owning this house I spent a lot of time there, mostly alone, working on the remodeling. A number of times a friend would come with me and help. Although I had been there a number of times, I had not yet met many of my new neighbors. Since it was a quiet neighborhood, I assumed most of them kept to themselves.
Every time we came to the house we would bring what ever we could fit in the car, so that by the time the house was ready we would not have that much more to move. I decided to store a lot of those boxes of belongings in the basement so they would not be in the way of the work I was trying to accomplish.
One weekend I ended up staying at the house by myself. I wanted to try to get it all done as soon as possible I was dying to actually move in. So I brought some old shorts and sweat shirts to work in and started early that first morning in the basement trying to organize everything. It's amazing how much 'stuff' I had accumulated over the years, until I saw most of it spread out in the basement I never realized just how much stuff I had.
Even though the basement was a decent size, my boxes of possessions made movement there very tight. The walkway I had been able to create was barely wide enough to accommodate one person.
As I was working in the basement later that morning I heard someone knocking at my front door. I set down the box I was working with and went upstairs to see who was here. It was my neighbor from next door. He had been out for an early walk and forgot his key. He was probably in his mid 60's or early 70's, and he was in pretty good shape, I guess his walks were good for him. I asked what I could do to help. He said if he could use the phone to call his daughter, she had a spare key and could come let him in. I showed him the phone and waited t see what happened.