Confronting basements....alone

Objective: You live alone....in a house...it is cold and gusty ...the shingles flap ...the windows rattle...the floor beneath squeaks...you want to know whether you are really alone...you are paranoid ...you want to check the basement...What do you do...how do you do it.

The 19-point plan:

1. Take a deep breath before opening the door leading to the basement stairs.

2. It is always good to be armed with something, just incase somebody is already standing there. I use a mop.

3. If no one is there, breathe out. Actually breath could be used as a weapon, but it depends on how much onions we eat.

4. Now, take a deeper breath. Look down at a 45 degree angle and gauge the number of steps in the stairway.

5. If they are multiples of 2, plan on taking two steps down at a time. If not, step one step down, before you start. Either
way, two steps at a time is the way to go.

6. Once you are in the basement, turn around and see whether someone followed from the top. We don't want to be spooked you see.

7. Count the number of corners you would expect to see in the basement before hand.

8. Now, start looking at those corners real fast. It always helps to use our standard trick of looking at two corners at the same time to save time.

9. At that moment, count the corners that we have secured. If we have that matched with the count in (step 7), we are ok.

10. Just incase we don't, we have to do the corner checks all over again. The last thing we want is to be worried about that one corner we missed.

11. Always, there would be some corners that we need to look twice. At that time make sure, you look at that corner, blink three times and look again. That counts as doubly secured.

12. By the way, we need not check the sump well all the time. Twice a day should do the trick.

13. Depending on the season, the A/c or the heater might turn itself on while we are in our reconnaissance mission. Always plan for the bad-da-da-da-droooooom sound. Fainting on hearing that sound is not a good idea.

14. Now to the most important part of the process...."CHECKING THE WINDOWS".

• If it is sunny outside, smiling at the windows while looking at it, is permissible.
• But if it is dark outside, it is a MUST that you frown, look serious and threateningly at the windows.
• That way, we will scare someone who is looking inside while we look outside.
  

15. Especially when there are two windows, we want to check them at the same time.

• Take a quick look outside one of them and run (sprinting is better) to the other window and look outside the other.
• But as usual, to clear all doubts, we would want to run back to the first window, just incase any person outside is trying to trick us with the same moves.

16. Now, rush back to the stairs. Keep in mind, that you need to do one last glance before stepping up the stairs.

17. Irrespective of how many steps you took at a time while coming down, it is mandatory that you take three steps at a time while going up. I understand that if the number of stairs is not divisible by three it might look a little awkward while taking the last step. Believe me, it is better to look silly than to be foolish. We know we want to be secure, right.

18. Breathe out.

19. When we master to do this check in 6.3 seconds, we are quite secure.