Humour: short story: Personality types: the creeper

Tweet

John's parents had long died, and now it was time for his wife to invite her father for a visit. He arrived from overseas, and his stay was to be for 6 months. John, a very private person, wondered how he would cope with another person living in the house. The first couple of weeks went alright, because John's wife had taken two weeks off work to stay home with her dad. After that, John would be home alone with this old man, who hardly knew the language, and to make communication even harder, he was also a bit hard of hearing. John was expected to get the meals, breakfast and lunch, morning and afternoon teas too, for the old boy too. John was not young himself. He was 67 now, but his father in law was 84. The old guy used to creep around slowly and softly. John hated his constant creeping around. John nicknamed his father-in-law, "The Creeper". When John was watching the television, he would suddenly feel that there were eyes behind him. The father in law was standing still behind John's armchair, looking over John's head at the TV. Then, John went up to his study to write some poetry on his desk computer. After a half-hour had gone by, John again felt cold behind his gills. The creeper was in position behind him again standing there idly, looking at what John was writing. John hated this. He liked to keep his writing up of his nightly dreams to himself, but even his writing his poetry, he always wanted no prying eyes, spying his works in production. Next, John went outside into his garden, and he started weeding a garden bed there. Sure enough, after another half an hour had passed by, this time, John saw a dark shadow in his garden bed. The creeper was behind him on patrol again. Next, John went inside, and he started to prepare their lunch. It was only a very small kitchen, but as John opened the fridge door, he realised someone was behind him again. He said nothing, but he did make a thumbs-up sign. (Which one am I referring to here, you might ask? Both said nothing, but it was John's father-in-law, who made the thumbs-up sign) John's father-in-law had had a busy morning creeping around and this had obviously whetted his appetite now. They had lunch together, but then as John washed the dishes, somebody again stood behind him looking on. At least John had had a private breakfast, but he had had to hop up at 7 am, and eat it quietly and quickly, otherwise, he would have woken up the creeper, and the day would have started with his friend, the creeper, attached to him then again too. In the afternoon, John went out to his garage, shut the door, but he didn't lock it. He had an exercise machine there, and so he started doing a few exercises, quietly there. John also loved to exercise on his own, as halfway through, he always incorporated a meditation of sorts in there too. This was his tantric dancing routine, that he had learnt in one of his spiritual pursuits before he had married, and even his wife knew nothing of this. After half an hour, his father in law opened the garage door, saying, "I was looking for you John. What are you doing here in the garage?" "What's that weird dance you were doing there?" How can such a private person as John handle such a person? As a final annoyance for John, the old man had a bad habit of leaving the toilet door open when he went in there to only stand up. The toilet was just up the hall from the kitchen, a room up from the laundry. John felt improvised on, if he went into the laundry, when the old man was in there, and he also even felt a bit squeamishly uncomfortable, even when he was in the kitchen, and he could hear the trinkling noise going on up the hall, a bit. Afterword: Handling the connection to any other person requires tact, intellect, patience, forbearance, and understanding. You need to think for them in their way, and not be dumb to the underlying reasons for their behaviour. Here, John's father-in-law simply was trying to love his son-in-law in his own way, by getting close up to him, to be near to him like this. He was no creeper, he was more a vine that wanted to wind his life around another. He only wanted to get to know and to understand John, and to love him too, as a father, in place of John's own already dead dad. Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com John's father-in-law was just trying to get to know his son-in-law.