The Ninja

There's a ninja living in my driveway.

I know because I've seen and heard him. The first time was about a month ago, not long after I'd moved into the Submarine. I was home alone, practicing walking from the living room to the bedroom to the kitchen without ever touching the floor, when I heard a sound like someone throwing a clown off a tall building.

"Hey! Hey-yay-yayayayayayeeeeeeeeiiiii!"

Alarmed, I ran to the front door and looked outside. All I saw was a slight, nebbish man wearing jeans. glasses, and a t-shirt and looking for all the world like Stephen Colbert's younger, slightly dorkier brother. Relieved that there were not, in fact, clowns falling off the roof, I turned away from the window and then stopped. There it was again!

"Hey! Hey-yay-yayayayayayeeeeeeeeiiiii!"

Pulling aside the curtain, I saw the man turn rapidly around, lift a large stick above his head, pause, emit a loud "Hey!", bring the stick down violently, and then lunge forward with a kind of prancing motion across the driveway. (When I say prance, I mean prance - with a tight little booty shake that made it look like he had a child's hobby horse between his legs). While doing this he thrust the stick out horizontally, as if to vanquish a gang of invisible samurai, and emitted the "Hey-yay-yayayayayayeeeeeeeeiiiii!" that I was starting to recognize as his battle cry. Mesmerized, I watched for a few minutes from behind the curtain, mentally grading him on poise, posture, and what I somewhat unsatisfactorily termed "heart". Occasionally he would alter his battle cry to a sort of "Hooowahwahahaoooooo!", but it was unclear what made this change necessary. After a few minutes of this, fearing that he might catch me looking and suddenly feel self-conscious, I turned away from the window and went back to what I was doing.

Since that night, I've heard the battle cry several times, always at night, and it always catches me off-guard. I've toyed with the idea of turning on my porch light for him (the driveway gets rather dark, and I control the only light that makes it navigable at night), but - again - I don't want him to feel self-conscious. I have absolutely no idea who this ninja is, or where he lives. At first I thought he might be my upstairs neighbor, Stompy McStompstomp (that would account for some, at least, of the violent racket upstairs), but I recently heard Stompy doing his thing while the ninja was outside doing his, so I'm positive it's not him (besides, one would think that a ninja would normally move with stealth, at least in his own home, and stealth is most definitely not Stompy's m.o.).

On the whole I believe he's a friendly ninja, and I feel much safer knowing he's out there keeping watch, defending me from the evil that stalks NoHo at night. I sometimes wonder if, like that other invisible guardian of truth and happiness, Santa Claus, the ninja might like it if I left some milk and cookies outside for him from time to time. It might keep me on his good side - or it might simply enrage him. It could go either way, really. So for now, I'll just lay low.

In the meantime, my main hope is that he doesn't give the squirrels any ideas.