From The 'Hood

Yesterday Scruffybutt and I are sitting on the bed watching Oprah. We hear two loud pops, followed by the sound of breaking glass. The glass in the window behind us. I may have inadvertently caused a ripple in the space-time continuum thingy because I ducked, hit the floor, covered my head, grabbed Scruffybutt, the pistol, and the phone all in one motion. Sorry about that. I hope everyone's okay. Oh, and somewhere in all that I muted Oprah. I hope she's okay, too.

Well, nothing further happened -- no one broke into the house or smashed anything else. I did call 911. The weird thing was that the gal who answered kept asking me if I saw anyone. Um, that would be "No." (As a general rule of thumb, I don't look out the window while unknown objects/persons are breaking it. Just a silly quirk of mine.) She wants to know if I knew if they were in a car or on foot. Well, I didn't hear a car. She says a couple of more times, "But you didn't see anyone?" Um, still "no," as I was on the FLOOR at the time.

I checked the window before calling 911 by crouching to the side and moving the blinds with a stick. There was a hole in the glass near the top and a circular crack in the middle of the pane. Nothing had disturbed the blinds or the headboard, which reaches almost to the ceiling. So, I deduced that the damage was caused by rocks. But now I'm not so sure. Who would have two rocks at the ready, to be thrown in quick succession? When Tomcat got home, he looked for rocks on the ground between the window and the fence. Nada. (I was too afraid to go outside and check it out by myself. Another silly quirk of mine.) He also noticed two tears in the screen. I wonder if it was a BB gun? A real gun would have blown through the blinds and the headboard, wouldn't it? Weird.

The main thing I wanted the police to know was that our neighbors, who are good people, have been having trouble with their neighbors on the other side. They have had to call the police three times because these people have been harrassing them. They stand out in the yard and drink, try to pick fights, lob beer bottles across the lawn, and things like that. The first time our neighbors called the police was when these people where trying to pick a fight and they called (evidently) all their friends and relatives to come over to gang up on them. The police got that situation calmed down, but the next morning, these people followed my neighbors to church while making "pointing gun" hand gestures at them.

Whenever we've seen the police over there, Tomcat goes over to see if our neighbors are okay. Therefore, the bad neighbors know that we are friends. That's fine. We want people to know that Juan has friends on the block. So, I wanted the police to have a record of yesterday's incident at our house. It could be that these people want to expand their harrassment to us. Or, it might have been just some random idiot(s).

I hate situations like this. One family is making the rest of us feel unsafe. And the worst part is, there's an elementary school across the street, so our 'hood includes hundreds of little children.