Overeaction? Nah

I have been blessed with good friends during different seasons of my life and those good friends have been kind enough to stick with me for many years. My friends from childhood, from college and from adulthood add spice as well as the Starsky to my Hutch. A wealth of stories from our adventures are waiting to be told and some have been put in the vault forever. Here is one that should be in the vault for sheer silliness, but I am changing the names to protect the participants.

When I was fresh out of college, my brother and I lived together in an apartment complex that seemed nice on the exterior. They talked a big game, but it was run by upscale slumlords who didn't do a great job of screening and background checking people. We were on the third floor and our second floor neighbors were a bit on the shady side. There was a lot of odd hour activity, strange smoky smells, loud fights and then a huge Doberman appeared. Every time I had to walk past that thing on the way up to the apartment it would bark with such intensity, I would have to hold on to my bags extra tight so as not to drop them out of terror. My brother made up with the dog by slipping pieces of bologna through the gate slats and giving it drinks of water. After a year or more, my brother left to go to Alaska for a job there and I was living by myself in the apartment. Not having a roommate or an attack dog myself, I was a bit nervous. My saving Grace was my friend, S, who I've known since middle school. She had previously lived in the same complex, but had recently moved out to one of the cool houses downtown. We still talked and socialized. She lived with a roommate who was a little different and had been having "guests" stay over, so a few days earlier she started staying in my brother's room until we found an apartment together. As a grad student, she also did a lot of house sitting, so she was always doing something exciting. This particular weekend, she was house and dog sitting for a family out in the west part of town. Remember all these things.

One night whilst sitting in the apartment watching some sort of exciting television show, I heard a ruckus down below....wow, a poet and I didn't know it. Men yelling profanities at each other, a woman screaming, noises that sounded like physical fighting. I was freaked out and called my friend P, who was also my brother's friend and had always checked on me in my alone state. While the phone was ringing, I heard POP POP POP POPPOP!!!! Gun fire. P answered and I said, "P, there are people fighting and shooting guns in the parking lot and I am scared!". "Well, what do you want me to do about it? Come over and get shot? Call the police if you are scared!". Click. Nice, right? I call the Brain, who lived in VA at the time. "What do you want me to do out of state? Keep your head down and your door locked. You need to find a new apartment! Love you!". So, I just rode it out, rocked myself to sleep in the fetal position and was glad to see morning come. I called S the next day and told her about the drama. We agreed that I would save some the really exciting parts for our activities the next night and rang off. The evening of our activity, we had a nice dinner and may have seen a movie or a concert. She came up to chat for a while at the apartment and then left to go to her sitting job. It was summertime and I am a sweater, so I went to take a shower. I locked the recently installed by my Uncle David chain lock and went to my room. With the water on, it was hard to hear much, but I started feeling like I had heard something. I froze in fear. Then a huge pounding came on my door, feverish pounding. I tiptoed to my doorway and peeked out into the main area to see if I could see the front door. i knw, stupid. What I saw was the door open and a hand desperately trying to unlock the chain. This is where I almost wet myself until I realized it was S's arm. Since she was living with me, I had given her my brother's key. I unlocked the door and she ran in, slamming the door and locking it quickly. "I heard the guys out there again. They were yelling and fighting and screaming. I got into my car and when I went to start it, there was a sound like a gunshot and then my car went dead. I think they shot my car! So I waited and then I ran for it back up to the apartment!". We could still hear the chaos in the parking area and were torn as to what we should do. We decided it was safer to pack a few things for me and make a run for it to my car, heads down, and stay at her house sitting house. We ran like Falk and Arkin in the The In Laws (Serpentine! Serpentine!) and we got in my car. I had forgotten my glasses, which I usually wore to drive, but we pressed on. The rain was pouring, I think I was wearing an outfit comprised of half day clothes and half pj's. I would have let her drive, but at the time she didn't drive a stick so it was all me. Night blindness runs in the family. I don't think I have that, but I'm getting there. With the rain and the glare of lights and the highway construction and my lack of familiarity with that part of town, it was the blind leading the blind. But we got there in one piece to the house/dog sitting house and took a large sigh of relief....until. The dog she was sitting was a beautiful and enormous Dalmation. He was happy and sweet and great. He came to greet us at the door covered, from head to toe, in hives. Covered. Poor guy was a trooper, but we didn't know what to do. It was now 11:30 at night and we couldn't very well call the owners on their trip. So, we checked him over, prayed it was nothing bad, and went to bed. The next morning we got up and tried to decide what to do about the injured car. Her parents were coming in to visit some relatives and meet at the Barrel for brunch. She called her dad. Here is the conversation. "Dad, my car is dead. I think someone shot it." "Where would your car get shot?" "In the parking lot at the complex(explained past events).". "I don't think your car for shot.". "I'm not sure, Dad.". Her car had been stolen twice previously and had been shot up and abandoned in the projects, so she kind of had a reason to go with this line of thought. "I think your battery has an issue.". "I don't know.". "We'll see when I get there.". So we did her dog duties, cleaned up and made the bed and then made our way back to the crime scene to meet her dad. When we got there, he was standing by the car, shaking his head with a big smile on his face. "Your battery blew up." "That can happen?", I said. "Yes, look at the stress marks on the hood of the car. It was a good one!". Sure enough, when we lifted up the hood, the evidence was right there. Everything then got cleaned up and a new battery was purchased and installed. They went on to the Barrel and I went on to my Granny's house.

Again you ask, why would you feel the need to tell us this story? Don't know. It was a wild night, full of weird stuff. I can never look at a door with a chain lock the same way, because I keep waiting for a hand to pop out of it. And, I don't care about the stress marks, every time I tell it I will still believe that someone shot her car. Makes us both feel better about our mad serpentine dash into the night. Now that is true friendship....