Tales from the Burbs

I did not make it to the gym yesterday morning. But I have a good reason … no really! I lost 2+ hours of precious sleep in the middle of the night thanks to some strange things afoot in our ‘hood. I woke up from what I presume was a pretty dead-sleep around 2 AM thinking I heard someone open and/or close our front door. I asked Matt if he’d heard anything and he said no and noted that the alarm panel wasn’t registering an open door. I was fine with going back to bed, but for some reason, he decided to go check things out.

So he headed downstairs and as he was coming downstairs, someone started knocking loudly and repeatedly at our door. Matt whistled for our trusty hound and Loki came running, bark at the ready. At some point in time the guy rang the doorbell and I heard a lot of barking from Loki. Whether it was just because he wasn’t getting a response or because of Loki’s barking, he went next door to our neighbor’s house. He was on their porch for a while and we thought maybe our neighbors were talking to him, but we found out later they didn’t open their door either.

I’m a bit fuzzy on the sequence of events, but when he was done with our neighbors’ house, he ran off down the street towards the (entirely closed) commercial section of our little enclave (home of a yoga studio, pizza shop, salon, dentist’s office, vet, martial arts studio, and coffee shop). Matt called over to our neighbors to check on things and he was glad he had because her husband was out of town and he let her know that he was next door if she needed anything. Soon he saw a police cruiser coming through our ‘hood and he flagged them down and let them know what was up. About that time the guy came running down the street again (not sure where he’d been) and the cops were on him in an instant.

We watched the rest of it unfold from Ben’s room – both kids slept through the whole thing – using the binoculars to get a better view. We still don’t know what was up, but he sat on the ground obviously agitated while the officers talked to him. By the time the whole thing was over, probably heading towards an hour after they first detained him, we had four cruisers on the scene. We joked that if he was just having a bad day he picked the worst place … our city has a surplus of very bored cops. Eventually, an ambulance showed up and hauled him off.

Curious as heck, but also concerned about possible threats in the ‘hood, Matt called the police department and talked to the officer who responded. He indicated that the guy was very very drunk and quite lost. He was looking for his friend’s house … a friend who lives in a completely different neighborhood. That’s pretty darn drunk.