I'm FINALLY a Jr. Policeman!

Years ago when my friend Jennifer and I could first drive, we spent countless hours driving around our home town. Most of the time we would just cruise around eating Taco Bell while listening to rap music, as is totally the norm for two very white suburban girls. However, on occasion if we spotted several police cars headed in a certain direction, either lit up or not, we would follow them from a safe distance and pretend we were Jr. Policeman who were invaluable to the southern Illinois troops.

Eventually we stopped pretending and went ahead and appointed ourselves for real Jr. Policeman. Unfortunately, having never actually helped catch a perp, done anything besides just driving by the alleged scenes of crimes several times from a safe distance, mention that we were also Policeman to the real cops, or heck, even actually speaking to the cops, it was only official in our eyes. However, that has all changed tonight, my friends! Well, for me anyway. I'm sure Jennifer was safe and sound asleep back in the I.L., so she can only be my assistant (to the) Jr. Policeman until she helps catch her own bad guy.

Let's go back to approximately 11 PM Phoenix time on August 16, 2007.

I'm sitting minding my own business watching Gilmore Girls and crocheting a scarf. I had been crocheting a sweater, but I realized that while I was listening to TV, I wasn't actually watching it, and since I hadn't seen this disc before, I wanted to do both. We don't need to get in to why I was doing anything involving a scarf or sweater in August in Phoenix, but I'll just tell you that it can get mighty cold come December.

So anyway, all of a sudden a car alarm right outside my house goes off. I thought that it might be Lily so I grabbed my keys and started to head outside. Fortunately, it wasn't Lily, it was a car I had never seen before parked directly behind her. Now, I had gotten new neighbors a little over a week before, but I do know their cars and this was not one of them. Normally this wouldn't have been that big of a deal except that the alarm continued to go off, while some guy I had also never seen before was standing in the open driver's side door. Now, I don't know if you have ever had your car alarm go off unexpectedly while you are right by it, but it doesn't usually take a full minute to figure out how to turn it off.

I tried not to get too worked up about it, but my last car had been broken in to and I did not want Lily to suffer the same fate, so while pretending to watch Gilmore Girls, I kept "nonchalantly" peeking out my window, which is very hard to do considering they are huge ugly vertical blinds. Eventually the alarm went off, the door was closed, and I could no longer see the guy, so I figured he was one of my new neighbors and (probably really stupidly, although at that time nothing seemed too weird) went out to my car to get a C.D.. Total P.I. stuff, I may have to give myself a promotion. And, after this, probably a gun or seven as well.

I got my C.D. and when I lock Lily, her light always blink to confirm that she locked. As I was walking back to my house, in Lily's strobes, I saw the guy just sitting in his car. At this point I started to get just a teeny bit nervous. So, what did I do? I decided to go hang out on my walled in front patio to see if I could hear anything. Smart, yes? Thankfully there was no sound so I decided to come back inside. I was still a little apprehensive though, so I decided to call 911 to ask if a police car could drive down my street and hopefully scare the guy into leaving. When I made the call, I didn't think I was nervous or even really upset at all anymore, but as soon as I started talking to the 911 dispatcher, I started shaking and talking really kind of fast. She was very nice and helpful and told me a car would be by soon. I hung up and really started shaking and tried to watch some more T.V.

About 10 minutes later the car alarm started to go off again, although this time it was coupled with a HORRIBLE and terrifying noise really close to the front of my house. At first it sounded like a cat in heat, and then I realized it was a person possibly imitating a cat in heat. Then car doors began open and slamming shut. I was literally petrified by this point because I figured that a police car drove by and the scary man figured out I was the one who called and he was coming to kill me. I had no idea what to do. Normally I would have called Fandy who, with a 4 hour plane ride and a two hour time difference between us would have been kinda useless, or Kirt who usually goes to bed by 10 and would not have been woken up by his phone ringing a few rooms away. I had narrowed my choices down to 2 people I knew would be awake and close enough to help but before I could call either one of them, I heard what sounded like a freakin' semi truck roll down my street, punctuated by more door slamming.

I gathered up my courage and snuck over to the farthest edge of my blinds and peered out. The semi sound was a fire truck. Whaaaa!?! A fire truck!?! That got my attention so much that I felt confident enough to stick my head through the blinds. It was like cop cars and real policeman had silently rained out of the sky! Hallelujah!! Then I noticed that there was a guy laying down on the ground, handcuffed, with a swam of cops surrounding him. I also noticed a green glass bottle of something that I couldn't decide was Mickey's or Jagermeister. Eventually I decided it was the latter. I tried to take a picture on the sly from inside the relative safety of my house to show you guys and this was the best I got. Sorry, I think I was still a little shaky.

Everybody is gone now, but the scary guy's car is still out there, which I also took a picture of as evidence, but decided not to post because it has the license plate number. I will be e-mailing this picture to several people though, because now I am convinced that this guy is going to come back for revenge. Hopefully, since it smelled like an overcrowded college bar outside my house long after the guy was arrested and hauled off, he will not remember that I had anything to do with it. Why didn't the real policeman have it towed? Is that part of my responsibility as an official Jr. Policeman now? In the meantime I think I need a big roommate or to move. Or both.