As Exciting As It Gets

Last week, Monday, I missed my Toastmasters meeting. It is kind of a story and I can definitely relate it to mindset – one of my interests, but I am not going to tell it today. 

That same day, my neighbor found a dead deer in his back yard. I live in a small city, so that is a rather unusual occurrence. I considered relaying the story I was told about the dead deer, but it is not really my story to tell. Hence, I am not.

Last week, Tuesday, I went to my favorite local Mexican place for lunch. When paying the cashier, who just so happened to be the manager, I listened to his woes about declining business. He told me about the new Mexican place across the river and remarked that the old Chinese place down the street was open again. I could write about my findings, but I am not doing that today, either.

I did not mention it when I talked to the manager of that Mexican restaurant, but I determined that I would check out his competition and make an assessment of it. That is what I did last week at lunch. Today, being Monday and therefore the lunch special being available, I put my hair up into a ponytail, slapped on a little mascara, donned my hoop earrings (because I lost my favorite pair of studs, ugh) and waited for lunchtime to arrive. (Good thing I did all this, too, by the way, because someone asked to have their photo taken with me. He said he wanted proof of meeting a "celebrity.")

I was getting ready to walk out the door when I heard the blare of sirens. Snickers, my dog, hates sirens but we get them up and down our street quite frequently because we are so close to the hospital. He was outside, so I went to open the door and let him inside to escape the noise. To my surprise, the sirens were not coming from an ambulance. They exuded from a police car… that was in the process of parking across the street from my house!

I watched as two officers stepped out of the car, walked across the street and up my driveway to the sidewalk. I wondered if my 65 year-old neighbor, who lives alone, was alright and breathed a sigh of relief when they passed his steps. I wondered if the single woman who lives in the apartment over him was in trouble. Nope. They passed her door, too. It must be the neighbors beside her, I concluded. (That is the only remaining house on the street.)

Mystery partially solved, I ran inside to grab my camera to take a picture of the police car for my blog. I just grabbed it off my dining room table and came out again, but when I came out of the house to take my picture I saw that two MORE police cars had parked behind the first and their drivers’ seats were already empty. I did the only reasonable thing under the circumstances: I took my photo and then went inside to call my neighbor and see if he knew what was up.

No dice. The neighbor did not answer his phone. So I went back outside to wait and see if I could determine what was going on. Guess who was outside when I got there? Yep. The neighbor. He had no idea what why the police had shown up in force at his neighbor's home. He had come outside, like I had, to see if he could figure it out. He nodded in the direction of a white-haired woman standing on the sidewalk outside the house. "There she is," he said.

As I followed his gaze, the haggard old woman began to move closer to us, saying something unintelligible. "I looked at the neighbor. What'd she say?" I asked.

"I don't know," he shrugged. "Something about her son trying to kill her or something."

Just at that moment, the door to the old woman's house opened and out came a young man. With determined steps, he walked across the lawn and to the sidewalk, where he continued down the street. Five young, male officers followed him out the door, but did not follow the young man. Their job completed successfully and without incident, they smiled as they continued to their squad cars. 

"There he goes," my neighbor indicated the young man walking up the street alone. "That's her son, [I forget the name]. He's a drunk." The neighbor paused before adding, "All that just to get him to talk a walk and walk it off."

I sort of shrugged in response. I have never been in such a small town that five officers will come to make someone walk off their drunkenness. In fact, I am accustomed to people being arrested for public intoxication and allowed to sit their drunkenness out in a jail cell. Three squad cars called to a scene, from my experience, is more along the lines of arresting a drug dealer (happened up at the corner across from my daughter's grade school and was really eerie to see the police approaching) or handling a major accident (happens all the time on Austin roadways) or responding to a bank robbery (happened about a mile up the street from my Texas house). So I was expecting an arrest of some sort when I saw three squad cars on the street across from my house. As it turns out, today's "culprit" walked away and everyone (except him) was happy.

All I can say is, "Wow," and hope that is as exciting as it ever gets in this town.