The Daily Ping

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September 13th, 2000

There’s a Lamp On My Porch

Monday night as I looked out my bedroom window, I saw something on the curb by my house. It looked like it might be a small trash bag or something from the construction work around my house. I decided to go clean it up and see what it was. As I opened my front door and stepped out onto my porch, there was… a lamp. Just sitting there, on my porch. And not a little lamp, but one attached to a small table. The whole thing stood about five feet.

The mystery item on the curb was the lampshade. What was weird about the whole thing was that nothing was missing from my porch, and nothing was damaged or out of place. Just a lamp. On my porch. And it was put there while I was at home.

I brought it in and decided to report it, just in case it had been stolen or something. Picture this call to the police’s non-emergency number:

Hello?

Yeah, hi. I have something kind of weird to report. I found a lamp on my porch.

After a little snicker, I was told an officer would be right out.

Of course as the officer arrived and I was talking to him, Huyen came home and saw a cop car in front of our house. 🙂 In any event, the officer was also a tad baffled, but we agreed the most likely situation was that since Tuesday was trash day, “some kid” just took the lamp from someone’s trash heap and put it on our front porch as some bizarre joke. This made sense, as some folks on a street about a block away had random crap sitting out front out last night.

The first thing I thought when I saw the lamp on the front porch (other than “What the hell?”) was, “This’ll make a great Ping.” -ram

Posted in Just Plain Odd

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