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You could be in grave...dangeuh
Dec. 21st, 2010 11:37 amYou guys, I had the weirdest night last night. I wanted to watch the solstice eclipse because, you know, once in a lifetime event. It was cold and rainy and we had a lot of cloud cover, so of course we couldn't see much. And my stupid neighbor with the 8 million watt garage lights never turned them off, so viewing was hard (I'm also on a corner, with two streetlights on each end of my property). It would start raining and spatter my glasses as I was looking up, so I would go back inside, wait, and then go back out.
At one point, I think around 11:30, I heard this horrible thumping from a house across the street -- that doesn't do it much justice. It sounded like a structure collapsing, something huge being thrown at a wall. And then screaming, and more of the crashing. Then more screaming, my neighbor's voice yelling, "Stop it! Just stop!" Where I live, some of my neighbors and I call it the single ladies' corner -- there are five of us in the immediate corner who all own our own houses. It's kind of funny. But that house has had different tenants over the years, which I found out last summer when I finally, after years, met my neighbor, and she told me that there had indeed been many different people there as she was subletting it while she was in developing countries like Kazakhstan doing democracy development.
I had this moment of disorientation and then I ran in the house and called 911. Right before I called, I heard her scream, "Just die already," which gave me pause. The cops came within about two minutes, and within another minute there were three squad cars. It's hard to figure out which house it is but I pointed at it, probably looking like a freak with my black jacket and hood up, pointing like the ghost of Christmas future or something.
I kept stepping outside to look at the eclipse, but by penumbra it was completely covered with clouds (fucking Seattle, man). After about 45 minutes I gave up. I saw the one original car was still there. They had asked me on the phone if I had seen or heard anything else there, and I did mention that one night she was walking her dog by my house, sobbing uncontrollably (I was outside and it was dark, so I doubt she realized I was there), but I didn't mention another time I'd seen her in a car with a guy in a store parking lot, and there was a weird, scary vibe from him and she was sitting in the car looking pissed and crying while he got out and went inside. I've often heard a guy shouting over there, but I know she has people over to watch sporting events all the time, so I have chalked it up to that.
After a while, the cops knocked on my door, and they told me that everything was okay, and she was really embarrassed because she was alone, and apparently she's going through a really difficult situation with someone who's dying, and there are disagreements over care and whatnot (which, something I'm all too well aware of). She was having a bit of a breakdown, they said, and I felt so awful. The one cop kept reassuring me that I should call anytime I hear something weird, and I told him I was just really worried because the pounding sound was so incredibly loud that it sounded like someone was being badly hurt -- and that I was flinchy from my previous neighbors, who really did try to kill each other. They kept telling me it was okay, and she even told them to please let the person who called know she was all right, but man, I felt so stupid. They were really nice about it, but I just...
I feel like I've only added to her burden. I mean, intellectually, I know I did the right thing -- it really sounded horrible. This is a super quiet neighborhood (except for me, apparently, being the person in whose yard someone was arrested with the K9 unit a few years ago!), so things like this are really amplified, and it's late at night, when me and only a couple other neighbors are even awake. I would want someone, if they heard screaming and pounding in my house, to call the cops. And yet I feel stupid and terrible.
My subject line is me trying to make myself laugh about it. Since my icon has Christopher Walken in it, I was thinking about my favorite Saturday Night Live skit, with Jay Mohr doing his Walken impersonation -- Christopher Walken's Psychic Friends Network. It's a call-in show with his guests, Todd Bridges and Crispin Glover, and they're telling you to call now for your psychic reading: "You could be... in grave... dangeuh." I die every time. Maybe I should buy a little something-something and leave it on the doorstep when she's gone.
At one point, I think around 11:30, I heard this horrible thumping from a house across the street -- that doesn't do it much justice. It sounded like a structure collapsing, something huge being thrown at a wall. And then screaming, and more of the crashing. Then more screaming, my neighbor's voice yelling, "Stop it! Just stop!" Where I live, some of my neighbors and I call it the single ladies' corner -- there are five of us in the immediate corner who all own our own houses. It's kind of funny. But that house has had different tenants over the years, which I found out last summer when I finally, after years, met my neighbor, and she told me that there had indeed been many different people there as she was subletting it while she was in developing countries like Kazakhstan doing democracy development.
I had this moment of disorientation and then I ran in the house and called 911. Right before I called, I heard her scream, "Just die already," which gave me pause. The cops came within about two minutes, and within another minute there were three squad cars. It's hard to figure out which house it is but I pointed at it, probably looking like a freak with my black jacket and hood up, pointing like the ghost of Christmas future or something.
I kept stepping outside to look at the eclipse, but by penumbra it was completely covered with clouds (fucking Seattle, man). After about 45 minutes I gave up. I saw the one original car was still there. They had asked me on the phone if I had seen or heard anything else there, and I did mention that one night she was walking her dog by my house, sobbing uncontrollably (I was outside and it was dark, so I doubt she realized I was there), but I didn't mention another time I'd seen her in a car with a guy in a store parking lot, and there was a weird, scary vibe from him and she was sitting in the car looking pissed and crying while he got out and went inside. I've often heard a guy shouting over there, but I know she has people over to watch sporting events all the time, so I have chalked it up to that.
After a while, the cops knocked on my door, and they told me that everything was okay, and she was really embarrassed because she was alone, and apparently she's going through a really difficult situation with someone who's dying, and there are disagreements over care and whatnot (which, something I'm all too well aware of). She was having a bit of a breakdown, they said, and I felt so awful. The one cop kept reassuring me that I should call anytime I hear something weird, and I told him I was just really worried because the pounding sound was so incredibly loud that it sounded like someone was being badly hurt -- and that I was flinchy from my previous neighbors, who really did try to kill each other. They kept telling me it was okay, and she even told them to please let the person who called know she was all right, but man, I felt so stupid. They were really nice about it, but I just...
I feel like I've only added to her burden. I mean, intellectually, I know I did the right thing -- it really sounded horrible. This is a super quiet neighborhood (except for me, apparently, being the person in whose yard someone was arrested with the K9 unit a few years ago!), so things like this are really amplified, and it's late at night, when me and only a couple other neighbors are even awake. I would want someone, if they heard screaming and pounding in my house, to call the cops. And yet I feel stupid and terrible.
My subject line is me trying to make myself laugh about it. Since my icon has Christopher Walken in it, I was thinking about my favorite Saturday Night Live skit, with Jay Mohr doing his Walken impersonation -- Christopher Walken's Psychic Friends Network. It's a call-in show with his guests, Todd Bridges and Crispin Glover, and they're telling you to call now for your psychic reading: "You could be... in grave... dangeuh." I die every time. Maybe I should buy a little something-something and leave it on the doorstep when she's gone.
