Quick honey, wipe the hard drives!
I was visited by The Man last night. Around 12:30am, Care and I were enjoying an episode of American Dad, when we heard a very loud knock at the door. We exchanged concerned looks, unsure of whether we should answer it right away. Then came the knocking again, louder even this time; loud enough that it startled us both into moving quietly next to the door to try and discern who on earth would be outside at this hour. But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself here…
About forty-five minutes previously, Care had been in the kitchen getting some food ready to munch on while we watched the show. I was puttering on the computer, as I’m wont to do, when I heard a loud bang outside the window. I got up to investigate, which I am also wont to do - it’s not uncommon for several bangs, yells, scrapes and crashes to emanate from outside our window in an average evening. I try to play the conscientious citizen and check things out if it sounds like it could be anything shady; at best, the police will have a witness to the crime, and at worst I get to people-watch from the relative anonymity of my window several stories above the ground below.
This time though, the first thing I noticed as out of the ordinary about the people below was that they were definitely looking back at me, in a very direct and meaningful way. There were two of them, both standing on either side of an idling car. One of them spotted me almost immediately, while the other seemed to be looking for something up above and to the side of my window. The one who seemed to be looking right at me (he was a fair distance away, and it’s dark, so could he really even see me?) then yelled out something that sounded like “Hey! Why don’t you come on down?!”
I discerned from their body language and tone that something had fallen on or near them, presumably dropped by someone in my building, and they were looking for the source. My curiosity had done me in - when they looked up to find the moron who was dropping stuff, the first thing they saw was my silhouette in the window. Great. I immediately backed away from the window, and didn’t move towards it again, lest they get the wrong idea and really become convinced that it was me.
Flash forward half way through the American Dad episode, and we’re back at the banging at the door. I’m convinced that it’s the two guys from below the window, who had been shouting off and on for the past twenty minutes or so, although we had been ignoring them pretty well with the television show on. Care is frantically searching for the phone number for the building’s live-in super, and I’m squinting out the peep-hole with cordless phone in hand, ready to dial 911 at the first sign of trouble. I run over my street address in my head a few times, getting ready to spew it over the line as soon as someone on the other end picks up. They knock over and over and over again, and Care finally gives up on finding where we wrote down the super’s number. I ready my dialing finger over the “9″ key, and call out hesitantly, “Who is it?”
“Police,” comes the curt reply. Whaa..? I ask them to show me some I.D., in case the guys from below are just being clever and trying to lure me into the hallway to give me a peice of their mind. One of the guys, still standing to the side of the door, waves his P.D. cap in front of the peep hole. It looks legit enough, although I’m not moving my dialing finger as I slowly open up the front door.
There are two uniformed policemen flanking my doorway, and they ask me if I’m alone. Care joins me at the door, and we realize pretty quickly that it must be connected with the yelling strangers below. They tell me that a rock was dropped on the guy’s car, and he and his passenger had seen me in my window immediately afterward. I explain that I was a victim of circumstance, and I think the ever-so-slight-and-in-fact-still-quite-masculine (har! har!) shake in my voice, and the cordless in my hand still ready to dial 911, convince them that I’m telling the truth. They apologize for disturbing us, and head downstairs to talk to the super a bit more about who else it might have been.
Now, there are rocks on the roof of our building, but the door to the roof is supposed to be locked well before midnight. So unless it was someone sneaking onto the roof after hours, in which case they might have been caught on a security camera somewhere in the building, then it could have been pretty much anyone with a window on our side of the building. That doesn’t narrow it down very much, and I have to say I’m not thrilled with living next to some wanker who throws rocks at cars, especially from high enough up that it could seriously hurt someone. I’ve heard numerous stories about people being killed by rocks dropped from overpasses onto moving vehicles, and it never fails to strike me at how utterly, utterly stupid some people can be - just totally lacking in empathy. And isn’t that the definition of a “psychopath”? One who is devoid of empathy? I’m sure there are more criteria, or else there are a lot more people who could quality for professional help.
There are some stupid stunts which I can laugh with, and others that I can at least understand why some people enjoy them, even if I don’t myself. But things like this, I just can’t wrap my mind around - what would posess someone to do something so reckless, so dangerous? Something that has practically zero return of “fun” - except for a few moments of giggling with your friends that hah! you actaully hit the car - and a near-certainty of doing property damage or even bodily injury to some poor folk you’ve never met. I want to come up with a more descriptive word, but “stupid” is really the most fitting term I think, given the circumstances.
