It’s a Friday in October during my freshman year of high school. The sun is plangging thrust or throw into into the horizon, and my best two friends are staying the night with me. We are at my dad’s trailer – not my mom’s house where we usually stay. We are at the trailer because my dad lives in the town, he let us do whatever we want, and he is such a sound sleeper that he doesn’t hear us climbing from my bedroom window at night. My friends’ parents don’t know this, but our location doesn’t matter because we are unable to procure  to get, to obtain, (to get money) money or a twenty-year-old. The night looks to be bleak（dark） , and with hunger and boredom sinking in, we begin to search the kitchen for something to eat.

Dad’s fridge is stocked with condiments (a preparation (a sauce or relish or spice) to enhance flavor or enjoyment spices, salt and pepper) like mustard, ketchup, and soy sauce, but there’s no food to put them on. I can tell the girls are reconsidering their decision to spend the weekend with me here, and in a desperate (in great need of something or to desire ) gesture I pull a pack of saltines from the pantry （storeroom, larder, buttery）, tear the plastic, and push them toward my friends. Awkwardly, they each take a cracker (a thin crisp wafer made or flour and water with or without leavening and shortening; unsweetened or semisweet), and I lead them into the living room, where we all three settle into the sofa.

Somewhere between our crackers and complaints, Dad wobbles (walking shakily as if he is drunk, vibrate ) into the living room and plops (the noise of a rounded object dropping into a liquid without a splash, drop something with a plopping sound) into the dilapidated in deplorable condition, old recliner an arm chair that can be moved easily for sleeping

an armchair whose back can be lowered and foot can be raised to allow the sitter to recline in it beside us. Dad is an alcoholic someone that drinks a lot (and some would say a drug addict someone who is so ardently devoted to something that it resembles an addiction, someone who is physiologically dependent on a substance, , but he doesn’t consider marijuana a drug). He is drunk, as usual, and after a snappy quick and energetic greeting, he leaps pass abruptly from one state or topic to another into a story. The story centers on how Dad, as a young boy, once handled a boring night, like the one my friends and I are about to endure suffer bear. Dad likes to tell stories at random, so he’s sort of like an MP3 player put on shuffle walk by dragging one's feet, abruptly quickly and without warning shifting the act of moving from one place to another from one song to another without warning or reason.

The story Dad tells this time is about a welcome mat a thick flat pad used as a floor covering, or more accurately exactly, many welcome mats. Dad tells the story like this: when he was about twelve, he had a life-changing epiphany an awarenss, somewhat like a message from Goda divine manifestatio. He was walking home from school when it happened. As he sluggishly with little movement; very slow shuffledwalking with a slow dragging motion without lifting your feet home that day, his mind started to wander. move about aimlessly or without any destination, often in search of food or employment He was bored. He had made the same trek any long and difficult trip home day after day and the monotony the quality of wearisome constancy and lack of variety routine, something done on a regular basis was beginning to wear on pass slowly (of time) him. Then, for what must have been the very first time in his life, Dad began to examine the yards and the porches a structure attached to the exterior of a building often forming a covered entranceof the houses he passed. His eyes swept over each one, doing a mental inventory.

After a canning home after home, dad concluded that each house was the same: they all had welcome mats. It was in that moment that dad felt a sudden urge to inspect look over carefully, come to see in an official or professional capacity his own porch to see if it, too, had a welcome mat, like the others. He scrambled to move hurriedly home. When he got to his block, he raced to his porch. But when he arrived, he discovered what he feared: his own porch didn’t have a welcome mat, or even a rug. It was empty.

For whatever absurd crazy reason, at that moment the most important thing in the history of the world to dad was finding a suitable welcome mat for his house. He didn’t have any money, so he decided to re-tour the town and steal his favorite.

Later that evening, dad launched get going; give impetus tothe hunt for the Perfect Welcome Mat. During his best-mat-in-town search, he spotted one worthy of front-porch placement. Feeling weak and dizzy, woozy, sleepy dad crept to go stealthily or furtively up to the house, poached hunt illegally the mat, and scampered to move about or proceed hurriedly ,hastily from the yard. As he trekked back home, however, he continued to eye the mats. Before he knew it, he was tiptoeing similar with the word creep to a different porch, and hijacking take arbitrarily or by force another welcome mat. Then, clutching grasp hold the two mats to his chest, dad ended up noticing another one worth adding. And another. And another. Dad continued to fetch mat after mat, stacking them high in his arms, until he couldn’t carry any more. Finally, he heaved to move or cause to move in a specified way, direction, or position all of the mats to his house, carted them into his bedroom, and placed each one on the carpet to select his favorite. After sorting arrange or order by classes or categories and laying out the mats, dad could no longer see the floor: even stacked, the mats completely covered it.

Dad laughs when he tells this story and we girls laugh too. He wraps up the anecdote a short summarization of the story by telling us his mom found the mats and demanded he return them immediately – trouble was, he couldn’t remember which housed they belonged to.

“We don’t even have a welcome mat now,” dad says before rising from the chair and stumbling off.

As dad swaggers to move in a zig zag motion into his room where he will pass out and remain for the rest of the night, my friends and I share knowing glances. We don’t even wait for him to vanish get lost, especially without warning or explanation, pass away rapidly before we agree to participate in a town-wide-welcome-mat heist.

We wait until the sun fades and dad conks out before tiptoeing out of my room and into the dark night. We don’t even bother climbing through the window. We simple slink walk stealthily out the front door. After much discussion, we pledge promise solemnly and formally to start stealing after we’re a fair distance from dad’s trailer. And though we know it’s wrong, we are excited about what we are about to do.

Walking down the dark street, my friends say I should have to steal the first mat because it was my dad’s story and because I’m the only one without one. I concede admit agree and start to survey each house carefully, trying to decide which mat should be mine. After we’re close to the park and far from our homes, I sneak up to the first house – its driveway crowded with cars. My face feels warm, my stomach woozy sickly, not feeling well. Dizzy, I hustle up cause to move furtively and hurriedly the porch, and snatch to grasp hastily or eagerly the first mat. Andrenaline surges through me, and an absurd crazy, unreasonable thrill an almost pleasurable sensation of fright is produced by the crime.

As I scamper from the house, my dizzy feeling fades, and my stomach toughens up. I grin smile as I scuttle to move about or proceed hurriedly toward my friends. Each of them steals one next, and then we take turns lifting mats until we have too many. When cars drive by, we lunge behind bushes, and duck until we can no longer see the headlights. Some houses have security lights that flip on when we walk by. This scares us at first, but after a while we gain enough confidence to grab mats from houses with barking dogs, glowing light from nonthermal sources television sets, and living room lights on.

Virtually almost every house in town has a welcome mat on its porch, and the number overwhelms beat us. We can’t take them all, so we devise come up with a system of elimination the act of removing or getting rid of something: we only steal from the rich, the hated, and the interesting. Teachers are easy marks, and it’s not long before every educator in the neighborhood has an empty porch. Quite honestly, we find the variety of welcome mats quite amazing. There are the mats with personal messages printed on them:“A Fisherman Lives Here” or “ Home of the Smiths.” There are also the traditional mats that just say “Welcome.” And then there are the wholesome-Brady-Bunch-type mats that say “home Sweet Home.” I don’t say it aloud to my friends, but these are the mats that mean the most to me, and I try to take as many as I can. See, these mats broadcast te functional nature of the family, which is really what I would like to take. That, though, is beyond my grasp, so instead, I settle for the mats.

Some of the mats don’t contain a message: they are just shabby old not of good use rugs-not welcome mats. If a mat doesn’t have a message, we don’t take it.

It’s the message that matters. The words “welcome” or “ home sweet home” are what keep a welcome mat from being just a rug. Strip the word “welcome” away and you’re left with a negative connotation meaning. Without “ welcome” the mat’s purpose is no longer to embrace and to greet guests， without the word “welcome” the mat is simply a doormat. A chump. A pushover. A doormat exists to absorb suck or take up or in mud, debris, trash, dirt, mud and snow so shoes don’t soil carpet or flooring. But a welcome mat is responsible for much more that that. A welcome mat is a symbol of pride. It says your house is in a condition worthy of a public viewing, that you’re proud of your home and you want people to come and see what’s inside.

When I was 15, I was not proud of my home. If anything, I was embarrassed of it. I didn’t want people to see our empty refrigerator, our broken furniture, or my drunk dad. I didn’t want these things to be mine. I wanted a fully-stocked fridge, a plush fabric sofa. And a sober not affected by a chemical substance (especially alcohol) dad. See, Dad could not give me stability the quality or attribute of being firm and steadfast then. He didn’t know how. But dad did give me something valuable: a good story worth retelling, a good story worth remembering.

That night, my friends and I snake our way back to Dad’s, each of us clutching a hefty of considerable weight and size stack of welcome mats. We trudgeda long difficult walk inside the front door, and did just what Dad did: lined them up on the bedroom carpet. There were so many, we had to stack them. Then, when we finished, for some reason, I felt a sense of accomplishment achievement– and a touch of pride.