Mohawk
An Unusual Day?
RECEIVED Mon., Nov. 10, 2008
Dear Editor,
The sound of the helicopter flying in circles above our house woke me up last Thursday an hour before my 5:30am alarm. I could see the searchlight snooping around our yard. I was about to go wait for my No. 37 bus and go to work but decided I’d better check the local TV news first. All of the channels were reporting live from our Windsor Park neighborhood (that’s in 78723 for all of you ZIP code worshipers). “Gun shots” … “AK-47”… “body armor” … “car chase” … “one man dead” … “two men, considered to be armed and dangerous, still on the loose” … “SWAT team” … “nearby schools closed” … “Berkman Drive, Wheless Lane, Dorchester Drive, Patton Lane, all closed” … “Chief Acevedo urges everyone in the area to stay inside.”
My boss would surely understand why I didn’t think I should go to work. For a brief moment, I felt like a little kid who had just learned that school had been canceled because of the snow. That quickly changed to paranoia. My family spent the entire day inside. I peeked out of each and every window and went through all of the possible scenarios in my head. “What if they see the tricycle in our front yard, know that we have a child, and force their way into our house and take us hostage?”
As I was making a mental note to myself to change my views on guns and maybe even get one, I heard a loud commotion in the yard and looked out the front window. I saw not an Uzi-toting gangbanger, tanked up on meth and running from a bunch of cops and dogs, like the one from my imagination, but a man emptying our new (very full) single-stream recycling bin into the truck and driving on to the next house just as he would on any ordinary recycling day.
The sound of the helicopter flying in circles above our house woke me up last Thursday an hour before my 5:30am alarm. I could see the searchlight snooping around our yard. I was about to go wait for my No. 37 bus and go to work but decided I’d better check the local TV news first. All of the channels were reporting live from our Windsor Park neighborhood (that’s in 78723 for all of you ZIP code worshipers). “Gun shots” … “AK-47”… “body armor” … “car chase” … “one man dead” … “two men, considered to be armed and dangerous, still on the loose” … “SWAT team” … “nearby schools closed” … “Berkman Drive, Wheless Lane, Dorchester Drive, Patton Lane, all closed” … “Chief Acevedo urges everyone in the area to stay inside.”
My boss would surely understand why I didn’t think I should go to work. For a brief moment, I felt like a little kid who had just learned that school had been canceled because of the snow. That quickly changed to paranoia. My family spent the entire day inside. I peeked out of each and every window and went through all of the possible scenarios in my head. “What if they see the tricycle in our front yard, know that we have a child, and force their way into our house and take us hostage?”
As I was making a mental note to myself to change my views on guns and maybe even get one, I heard a loud commotion in the yard and looked out the front window. I saw not an Uzi-toting gangbanger, tanked up on meth and running from a bunch of cops and dogs, like the one from my imagination, but a man emptying our new (very full) single-stream recycling bin into the truck and driving on to the next house just as he would on any ordinary recycling day.
Josh Rucker
