by Robert Brown

September 1, 2017

I was selling puppets, Freddie, Freida and Dolly duck in a small office building. I noticed a unmarked bathroom and went in. Soon the bathroom door opened and a woman came in and sat in the booth next to me. I scooted my feet over so she wouldn’t notice a man in the staff next to her. I waited until she left and waited a little longer so nobody would notice me coming out of the bathroom. When I came out of the bathroom the office building was completely empty and the front door was locked. I started searching for a way out. On the second floor I saw in a closet a ladder leading to the roof. So I climbed out on the roof and thought about using one of the pipes to scale down to the ground but it didn’t look stable enough. So I tossed down my bag of puppets in the back of the building and then went to the front. I saw someone walking by and hailed them to call for help. A firetruck came and they sent up a ladder from the truck at an angle to the roof and walked me down the stairs backward with a fireman leading the way. I was in a hurry to get this over but the fireman cautioned me to take it slowly. A small crowd had gathered but when I got down they soon dispersed. No one asked me for I.D. or what I was doing in the building or any more of a statement than what I told them about getting stuck inside. When the firetruck was gone I went to the back of the building and got my puppet bag and walked away. I thought I could have been a thief, filled this bag with stuff from the office and then had the fire department help me escape.