Last night I heard three gunshots at close range around midnight. I woke HB.
"Did you hear that?"
"What?"
"I heard gunshots. It sounded close..."
He grunted and dozed back to sleep.
I live in a safe neighborhood in a densely populated city that produces plenty of bumps in the night, so I told myself it was probably just someone tossing metal down a garbage chute or something. Right?
Within minutes, sirens filled the air and an ungodly number of police cars parked across the street. I poked my head out the window and heard a cop shout: "Sir, just keep breathing!"
Ok, that doesn�t sound like a garbage chute.
In seconds, the adjacent block was packed solid with police cars (I lost count after nine), three or four paramedics, and four fire department vehicles, maybe more. A stretcher rattled, officials ran shouting, flashlights flashed. Cops dispersed on foot in all directions, looking under cars, and telling the sudden influx of pajama-clad pedestrians to go back indoors.
Hours later the battalion of flashing vehicles had diminished, but three police cars remained parked outside my neighbor�s residence where they stayed through the wee hours of the morning, presumably investigating the crime scene and putting tape around pools of blood or whatever it is they do after...whatever it is that happened. Was it a homicide? An armed burglary? I still don�t know, but it was unnerving.
(Update: It was a suicide. I'll leave out the details because there's no sense in spreading gloom to the living.)
I had a philosophy professor who believed April was the craziest month of the year, that it made people do crazy things. Spring fever essentially. In my experience people are crazy year round, but there is a tangible restlessness in the air right now that seems to make the crazy ones crazier. I, of course, am free of any blame of madness and am perfectly normal at all times. (Obviously!)
Sarcasm aside, I'm grateful for my prescription nasal spray which has changed my life. Seriously, this may be the first allergy season I've felt alert and full of clarity.
Unfortunately, two of my compatriots seem to have fallen victim to pollen-induced hysteria of late, and I find myself saying, 'comrade, calm down, slow down, it's a beautiful day.'
Because it is.
Funny how when the world is in bloom, we humans react with ... snot.
1:05 p.m. - 2008-04-08