Friday, November 14, 2008

You can go home again, you just don't want to...

It's never a good sign when you are walking up the sidewalk to your apartment at night and realize there's a man with a gun holstered to his side walking in front of you.  It took me a second.  He was just a walking shadow in front of me...and I knew there was something familiar with the lump on his right hip.  As soon as I realized it was a gun I looked a few yards ahead of him and saw 4 other police officers (whew, yes, he was a cop) surrounding an apartment a couple buildings over.  I went inside...
and was promptly disturbed by the fact that I wasn't disturbed. 

I wasn't scared.  I wasn't shaking.  I wasn't calling my sister to tell her if she doesn't hear from me the next day to come check and make sure I wasn't killed by a stray bullet in a shoot out.  I just came in.  Put my stuff down.  Petted my dog.  Got ready for bed.

You see, this is FAR from the first experience I've had like this.  I've been living in apartments for (yikes) 14 years now.

When I first lived at this complex with my sister, we once came home to a note on our door explaining that there had been a shooting in our complex and we shouldn't be concerned because it was an argument between two "friends" and not a random criminal targeting our complex.  Didn't matter.  Freaked us out.  We moved a short time later.

At that complex, we came home and drove by two men in suits...one holding a piece of string up to a hole in a window and the other holding the other end in a parking space.  I freaked out and when my sister asked, "Why, what are they doing?"  I explained to her they were measuring a bullet trajectory.  Turns out someone bought their teenager a bb-gun for Xmas and he decided to become a sniper.  It made the news when his 5th victim was shot in the face at a gas station (they figured it was a kid because his previous 4 victims had all been shot in the behind).
A couple days later the neighbor downstairs and over one got evicted for firing a shotgun on New Year's Eve.  I stayed at that apartment 4 yrs.  My sis got married, I got another roommate.  We left when we found out that the management was being taken over by a half-way house project and all of the people working there (in office and doing maintenance...yes, people with keys to our apartments) were addicts working on their recovery.  My roommate would take the day off work if we needed something fixed because she didn't want me alone when they came in.

She went her own way, and I moved in by myself back at this complex. 

For the first year, I didn't sleep.  Well, 2 hours on a good night.  I left the tv on all night for the noise.  I was terrified.  I realized that I was the only one to hear if someone was breaking in.  I was the only one to deal with it.

Eventually, with time and prayer (and putting stuff all over and near my windows so anyone trying to come in would make one heck of a commotion) I was able to sleep.  But the fun just kept coming.

We had a notice on our doors that a couple of thieves were going around knocking on doors and saying they were cops and when the door was opened they tied the person to a chair and robbed them blind.  Needless to say, I stopped answering my door unless I was expecting someone. (The peepholes they give us are so bad that you can't see out them at night because of the glare from the exterior light right next to the door).
I've had to call 911 twice to report someone with a gun...both times I asked the operator NOT to have the responding officers knock on my door so they wouldn't know I was the one who reported it...both times they knocked anyway. (I can understand why some people don't bother).  I've heard a helicopter flying overhead and when I stuck my head out to look I heard a voice from above (no, not THAT voice) telling me to go back inside and lock my door.  I did (turns out the jeweler across the street had just been robbed and the thief came here..yay!)

There have been countless times where I come out and morning after morning someone else's headlights or taillights or side windows are smashed up.  Every day for a couple weeks someone was going around and baseball batting the lampposts. 

And the saddest part of all...I live less than 2 miles from where I grew up.  I've gone by there recently.  I've watched the home that my parents took exquisite care of become a sad commentary on modern society.  We had lived there around 13 years I think.  There have been at least 4 subsequent owners in as many years.  The first one ripped out my parents rosebushes that lines the driveway.  He ripped out the peach trees and grapefruit trees in the sideyard and slabbed it over to park his RV.  He stumped the beautiful silk oak tree in the front yard (that had been the toilet papering target of many of my mom's students).  And I mean he stumped it.  It was like he had something against nature.  He didn't level the tree to the ground and clearly didn't want to pay to have it torn out.  It was like he just took a chainsaw to it and left the 3 foot stump just sitting there like some form of punishment.  The next owner put a terra cotta pot on it.  The next owner finally had it removed.  The current owner put bars across the entryway.  That last walk down that street (I used to enjoy walking the 3 mile circuit around the neighborhood) was just too depressing.  I looked at the home I grew up in, the homes of the neighborhood kids, and I was grieved at what the neighborhood had become.  It looks like no one cares anymore.  No one cares about how their yards look, or how their home looks.  It's all run down.  I hate neighborhood associations, but I can understand why people came up with them.  If you view a home as an investment and you tend it and care for it and maintain it...the last thing you want is everyone else on the rest of your street acting like they are all renting and it's not their responsibility to paint or pull weed or ...

Anyway.  Anytime I mention I want to move to a better neighborhood, someone quickly reminds me that "better" neighborhoods aren't necessarily safer.  Crime happens everywhere.
But I'm guessing they haven't had co-workers tell them how they listen to their police scanner and hear the cops called to my complex every night.

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