7 Quick Takes Friday, #53

My Quick Takes this week are all related. Oops. Sometimes I need to break rules, and doing it through Quick Takes makes me feel satisfactorily rebellious while not actually doing anything serious. This is me being passive aggressive. Feisty, ain't I?

1. Do you remember when Justin chased off a would-be burglar from our house last year? Somehow that experience frightened me worse than what happened this week, which should have been immensely more scary. But the burglar was acting directly against us and our perceived security; this week, the occurrence merely went on around us. (Our neighborhood IS safe and quiet 364 days out of the year. It's just weird.) Here's what happened:

2. Wednesday night, I was proud of myself for getting to bed early; by 10 PM, I was reading in bed while Justin studied in the living room. Around 10:30, we both heard what we thought were fireworks, but it didn't register enough in our minds to wonder about it. A few minutes later, I heard voices in the street in front of our house, sounding pretty agitated or excited. I assumed the neighbors were out there for some strange reason, and was about to go see what was going on, when the voices got louder -- they were running along the side of my house. We live on a dead end next to the woods, and there's no reason anyone should ever be running back there without our knowing it.

I froze in my bed, not able to decide what to do next. The frantic voices got louder as they ran closer to my bedroom window at the back of the house, and then there was a racket of fence shaking and wall pounding. I heard "We need help! Call the cops!"

3. No longer frozen with indecision, I yelled for Justin who'd begun hearing the yelling outside, too. Two men ran around behind our house and up to our back porch, banging on the windows for help. They begged Justin to call 911: someone had been shot. Justin yelled for me to get the phone.

4. I have this recurring dream: I'm trying to dial 911, but I keep punching the wrong numbers, and as I'm fumbling such a simple task, time is running out. Maybe it was preparing me for this moment, I thought. I would be able to dial it correctly since my brain was so used to running through the scenario, I thought.

I ran out of the bedroom, dialing as I went. I punched the 9 successfully, then accidentally the 4, then tried to hit clear so I could re-dial, but hit the 3 instead. 911 FAIL. I got it right on the second try, though, and told the operator what was going on.

5. I stood at the back door, relaying information to the 911 operator from the men on my porch. One was covered in blood and terrified. The other one -- the one who'd been shot -- was sitting down, leaning against our door, and in pain. He was bleeding from under his ballcap, and on his abdomen. He was saying things about telling his boys he loved them and apologizing for mistakes he'd made. He thought he was dying.

On my porch.

6. The police and ambulance arrived shortly, just about the time the wounded man had to lay down with weakness. His vision was failing and his arm was numb. He was having trouble breathing. He was taken to the hospital and we heard later that his lung collapsed, but it looked like he was going to be OK.

We were questioned about what we witnessed and then stood around watching the crime scene work unfold. A fire truck blocked off our road and aimed day-bright floodlights at our house. Officers milled around talking to the other man and trying to piece together the details of the story. The authorities and investigators stayed around until after midnight, when Justin and I finally got to bed. Not so much to sleep, though.

7. What it boiled down to, was trash talk. These guys had words with some other guys, and got shot at for it. What in the world? You don't like what someone's SAYING, so you SHOOT them?

What. In. The. World.

That's all, folks. Head over to Conversion Diary for more Quick Takes, and have a beautiful March weekend.