Crime and Alex

So Friday I'm at work, and everything is going fine, la la la, coming back from break, la la la, oh, my cell phone is ringing how embarrassing, la la la, don't recognize the number, let it go to voice mail, dee dee dum-- it's probably the dentist's office.

But it wasn't the dentist's office. It was my neighbor, calling to tell me that my house had been broken into and the cops were on their way over.

This puts a major cramp on a good Friday afternoon.

Before I go on, let me just tell you that, because my neighbor apparently caught them before they could really do anything other than fuck up my kitchen window, they didn't take anything. Technically, my neighbor saw them passing something blue and cloth out the kitchen window-- one was inside, in the kitchen, and the other was waiting outside the aforementioned fucked up window-- and they ran away with that, but we can't for the life of us figure out what it could have been. Also, other than the robbers (how odd, that I now get to use the word "robbers" in a blog) locking our dog in a bedroom, no harm befell the animals in the house, either.

But here, apparently, is what happened, according to my hero neighbor Alex:

Alex came out of his house to drink a beer after just getting home from going swimming at a friend's, and saw the two guys, passing the blue cloth thing out the window. He didn't figure we'd have the kinds of friends who would necessarily be emptying our house of possessions via the kitchen window, so he called the cops, and then he called me. He then went over to our house and kicked one of the robbers, really hard, in the leg. Which I happen to think is really freaking cool. That one, the one he kicked, took off running through our backyard, and the one in the house ran out and started running in the opposite direction. Alex chased that guy in his car for awhile, but he managed to escape by cutting through some yards.

Then the cops showed up, and, because they didn't know if anyone else was in the house, pulled their guns and ran around inside my house, SWAT-style. Which means my cat has now seen someone holding a gun, which I don't even think I ever have, other than in movies. By the time Ben and I got home, the cops were already gone, but there was a helpful note taped to our door: "Your neighbor saw two guys running out of your house. Call the EPD."

I have to say, it does seem odd that all the time I lived in Wilmington, nothing bad ever happened to me, and now that I live in a nice neighborhood in Ohio, across the street from an elementary school, my house gets broken into and cops run around inside it with guns. But I also have to say how awesome it is to have a neighbor like Alex, and all the other neighbors who came over to make sure we were okay, as well as all the people at work who were so concerned. I do wish, though, that Alex had kicked that guy maybe just a little harder, and maybe a little higher up on the leg, if you get my meaning...