Now, after last summer's incident with the Creeper, the countless nights spent on Creeper Patrol, and the realization of just how unsafe Dickinson can be, you would think we learned our lessons not to walk after dark.
Think again.
We've begun it again this summer, only instead of wandering my neighborhood, we alternate it with whoever happens to go on the walk. Last night was Troy's turn to host it on the South Side. Now, as some of my readers don't know where Troy lives or what the South Side holds in store, let me just give you a little visual. There are lights on only one side of the street and they are fairly spread apart. There are two trailor courts within about 4 blocks of each other and a couple types of low income housing. Troy's street is nice. His neighbors are friendly, and everyone looks out for each other. This is because in the corner house is a man that goes by "Psycho." His wife just left him. And when I say left him, I mean tried to move all the furniture out whilst he was gone, but didn't succeed and then a shouting match ensued. A concerned (smart) neighbor later called the cops to keep an eye on him, and Psycho told the neighbor that he often sees men trying to break into her house at night, and many other houses on the block and has a shotgun. But now Psycho won't help her since she called the cops. No record of this has been found at the police station. (Although, even if it DID happen, even record speeds reached by the police for response time means that they still arrived 3 hours later)
And Troy is home alone this week.
Now that I've set the scene, I'll explain what then happened. We went for a walk, laughing about many things including classmates' 1st times getting drunk, crazy people we knew (trying of course, to top Psycho), and life in general. We walked by the Heart River park. Movement in the sand near the slide caught my eye. At first glance, it looked like a squatting dog.
At second glance, I realized it was an f'in MAN.
He was moving all around the park, but on his hands and knees. And then he would completely lay down in the sand and stop moving. Pretty soon he would sit up Indian style. All right. Lindsey's Flight or Fight had kicked in and i wanted to run. I tried to hide on the other side of Troy, to which he later admitted to thinking, "Screw protecting her, if he comes, I'm running and saving myself." Troy tells me to call someone who will care to think of a plan. We call Christa. She didn't answer. It might have been my last few minutes on Earth, and she silences her phone. Luckily for her it wasn't.We quickly got back to his house and hopped in Troy's car to investigate further.
We drove back the park, and could clearly see it was a man. Sitting in the sand. Of a children's park. Merely sitting. And then he'd lay down. Or get on his hands and knees and sit like that. Troy tried to take a picture, but I wanted to get away. I was in a car, in the passenger's seat. I'm not entirely certain where I thought I was going to go. So I stayed put, and we noticed one of the "Brave" in Blue, DPD (Dtown Police Department for those of you who are acronymally challenged) drive by. So we follow him and flash our lights to get his attention that we need help.
(Disclaimer: In no situations should the DPD be your first line of defense. Unfortunately, we were desperate)
We corner him at the softball diamonds (Mistake #1: He felt trapped) and rolled down our windows, (Mistake #2: He's paranoid) which caused him to shine a giant floodlight in our car (HIS mistake #1: it blinded the driver). We tell him what we saw in the park that HE JUST PASSED (Mistake #3: I believe his exact words were "There's a park back there?"). We explain yes, and tell him it's called 'Heart River Park,' could he please go see what's going on?
We let him drive towards the park, but are still curious as to what's going on. So DPD shines his trusty floodlight at the park. But the guy was gone. He must have seen the policeman pass the first time when DPD was too busy playing Marco Polo with his radio and the remainder of the police on duty that night, to notice he was even passing a park. However, DPD definitely noticed US there again that time (of course, when it wasn't US he needed to be noticing).
We drove away, careful to drive the speed limit, while DPD gets hot on our trail and follows us for probably about 10 minutes or so. Our theories were that the DPD thought that A)we were playing some sort of joke on him and he has no sense of humor, or B) we tried to create a divirsion so that we could go commit illegailities ourselves.
Sorry, DPD. You were wrong on both counts.
So now, somewhere running around Dickinson, is a man. A man who sits in children's parks at night, waiting for who knows what. A man who creeps away unnoticed by DPD (again...DPD wouldn't notice an elephant if it paraded through church during the homily...but give 'em an underage drinker or person going 3 over the speedlimit anyday, and they'll be on top of it.) to sit in more parks at night.
I think we need to just stick to Zoomie Zoomie.
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