Misdirected Effort

I make an effort to procrastinate since it's one of my favorite activities. When procrastinating I manage to get 'everything else' done. Unfortunately, I have yet to develop a completely foolproof system so that I can accomplish a goal by procrastinating on a dummy task. I must work harder to outsmart my own brain.

So instead of sitting down and drafting up a really engaging blog post I found a random number generator and a page of creative writing prompts. I rolled the virtual 346-sided-die and came up with prompt 129. The following story has nothing to do with that prompt. In fact I went so off topic that I wonder why I even needed to get the prompt in the first place.
So I give you the little story that happened instead.


Our Neighbor, Mr. Laurell

This morning there was a dragon behind the couch. It wasn't big although I didn't get a good enough look at it as the frying pan I was wielding got in the way.  At least it's better than the Centaur we had in here last week, I had a hard time explaining the arrows and the hoof prints to the landlord.

When we moved in, Mr. Laurell was perched on the wrought iron railing of his front steps. He observed us as we brought in our boxes, his expression never wavering from a contentedly curious smile. The next day I saw him on my way out. He was standing on his porch, a small, steaming cup in and the same curious smile. I waved. And then with all the enthusiasm of a toddler on a rainy day he leapt from the porch and jogged to the sidewalk to greet me, holding his cup aloft without spilling a drop.

"Lovely to see you again."

"Yes it is. We just moved in you know." I said, hoping for the standard bit of new neighbor banter.

"It's been quite a while but you haven't changed a bit, have you?" He peered  up at me over the tops of his glasses which were shaped, I noted, like stop signs.

I searched my memory and out came nothing. But then he grinned and patted my arm reassuringly.

"Oh never mind, you should be going. Do come over for tea some time and bring the young lady of course."

I could hear the gears in my brain groan in protest as they tried to navigate the conversational ess-curves at high speed. By the time I caught up to reality, the screen door was swinging shut with a muted 'squeak'.

Hours later at the office, I stopped speaking mid-sentence when I realized that when Mr. Laurell had reached out the pat my arm he had left the little cup behind. It had remained in the air, spinning demurely and all the white emitting a cheery puff of steam.

Coleen and I went over to tea a few days later. Mr. Laurell buzzed around us in an over-sized terrycloth robe filling this and fetching that. He told us that he used to be a mail-man and showed us a few pictures.

His home gave the impression of barely retained disaster. I swore to Coleen later that night that some of the walls were just tightly-packed piled of books. She laughed and I had to forget about it. We both thought he was a sweet, if flighty old man. So when he asked us a few weeks later to keep a few things for him while he cleared the house a bit we gladly accepted.

That's how we found out our neighbor, Mr. Laurell was a wizard. Now if only we could figure out how to hide the scorch marks on our carpet.