Span-Dangler and the Power Outage

Johnny Span-dangler

In a blink and an anticlimactic flash the power went out.

With cries of ‘oh no’ one of the boys (Chris) headed out in the street to check and see if the power was out all over the street or if it was just our house.

Here a short middle age man and his dog met him.

This man proceeded to talk to Chris in Spanish for five minutes, each time the conversation held even a fraction of a pause Chris tried to interject that he didn’t understand English still the man persisted. Thinking quickly Chris called Becky, our resident Spanish major. After less than a minute of conversation Becky realizes this man doesn’t understand much Spanish.

“Habla ingles?” Beck asks and the man pauses for less than a beat.

“Oy, Yes, my name is Johnny Span-dangler!”

By this point we’ve all crowded around the door.

“Where are you from?” Asked Shanda, another of my housemates.

“Northern England, Newcastle to be exact.” Mr. Span-dangler replied.

He went on to tell us about how the owner of our house also owns his, our next-door neighbors and two or three others up the street. He said that often the houses owned by the landlord often loose power for no reason and some one usually calls and they get the power fixed, not to worry.

“How long?” Becky asked, referring to the power.

Span-dangler didn’t miss a beat. “That’s a very personal question to be asking a man, now isn’t it?”

At this point we nearly died, do we laugh, was he serious?

While we fought to keep straight faces he continued. “I’ve been married three times, and each time it gets shorter.”

“I mean the power.” Beck said, trying her hardest not to laugh.

Well we finally figured out that power would be off for an hour or two and it was no need to worry, but through this conversation Mr. Span-dangler offered us wine and weed no fewer than three times.

He also mentioned he was a chef before he retired, cooking Indonesian and Thai food.

“When it gets warmer,” He said. “We have BBQs out on the room terrace, not the grill, high class such I mean, all international, we invite the whole neighbor hood, me and my wife do.”

“Really?” Chris said, humoring him a bit.

“Oh yeah, and your all invited, being new to the street and all, even the land lord will be there.”

And so it was settled we got to know our new neighbor and were invited over for a drink any time.

As soon as we shut the door we died laughing, we laughed, and laughed until our sides were sore.

When we finished laughing Becky went outside to make sure the power in our shared-power neighbors was on yet, a man came up and began chatting away with her.

“Oy.” He said with a wave of his hand. “Your power out too.”

“Yeah.” Becky replied standing in our door.

“Well if ya get cold feels free to pop ‘round to our door we got a nice fire going. You can have a glass of wine and all with us.”

“Thank you.” Becky and I said together in an appeasing tone.

For a moment this forty-something year old Englishman, who introduced himself as Glen, told us about how he used to be a policemen working in forensics and now he works as a ‘unofficial chauffeur’, ‘taxi driver’ and about anything ‘un-legal car related’ he could make some money off of.

Becky and I laughed.

“Do you know Johnny Span-dangler?” Becky asked.

“Oh yeah, I live with him, we’re good friends.”

Becky and I tried our hardest not to laugh.

“Well I’m off to go get some fire wood, see you in a bit”

A bit later we were all in the dining room laughing when we saw Glen walking back up the street with an entire wooden sign from the construction site at the bottom of our street as his fire wood.

So tonight was an interesting time of meeting our new neighbors and decided weather or not to attend Johnny’s BBQ in the summer.

For a chance at more laughs, I think the answer will most decidedly be yes. (Don’t worry family, all the guys are dying to go to.)