Marion's Miscellaneous Musings

Disturbed Sleep #1

A little after 1:00 in the morning earlier this week, neighbors rang the doorbell. They had heard a bang and a car driving by, so they investigated and discovered the window of our little car had been broken and was lying on the street. We called the business number of the police, and one came out about a half hour later. He was joined by another about 45 minutes after that.

The door frame next to the window was dented. Initially, they found a rock with all the right scratches on it. It is probably possible for a rock that size to dent the frame, although, hating physics, I did not calculate the velocity of the vehicle from which the rock was thrown. I decided that it is probably possible and left it at that. They might have been aiming for the side rear-view mirror.

Since there were no other reports of similar mischief, the police said there is a 70% chance we may have been targeted, and questioned us and the daughter about who may have a grudge against us. We did come up with one candidate who had a nasty argument with the daughter because he was NOT her boyfriend.

We eventually got back to sleep around 3:30.

After we went back to bed, things got interesting.

While the police were visiting the young man who was not the boyfriend and not happy about it, two things happened. One was that he and his parents could account for his whereabouts at the pertinent time. Another was a communication from the emergency room at the hospital.

Four boys had been joyriding around the town, and they found a bowling ball or that size of lawn ornament (hereinafter referred to as the bowling ball) and stole it. Then they drove down our street, discovered our car, which, being white, was more visible than any other car parked on the street at that time of night. One threw the bowling ball at it and it bounced right back at him, hit him in the head and knocked him out. He woke up soon after, called his mom and told her that someone had thrown a rock at him as he was riding and hit him in the head. Soon after, everyone (kids, police, parents) showed up at the emergency room.

The police treat a rock thrown through the car window almost as seriously as they treat a drive-by shooting: they will be out scouring the neighborhoods looking for someone dangerous. (Although hopefully he is only armed with rocks.) So they asked a lot of questions, and the story eventually broke down. It was at this point they communicated with "our" police officers, who had apparently reported the bowling ball on our street.

So, by a complete fluke, the case has been solved.

It was nice of the police to stop by the next night and let us know what happened. At least we don't have to worry about retaliation from the non-boyfriend!

Plus one of my friends gets to laugh at it. While cleaning out her parents house, her brothers decided to just toss things out of the attic (through a window that they couldn't open, so they just broke it, and these are adults with teenagers of their own!) to the brother on the lawn, who would then toss it into the garbage can. Fortunately the one on the lawn did not try to catch the bowling ball, but it did roll into the street as a car was coming by.

But there is more! Pictures as soon as Jack treats my request to download photo editing software seriously. But at least the scanner is working now! There was a shipping switch that hadn't been changed. The tricky thing about that is it is hidden under the top where you can't see anything and it is a dark gray switch on black plastic with black symbols (in a room where we keep the lights off because they just heat things up, it is 100 degrees out and our air conditioning is underpowered), and it isn't mentioned AT ALL in the set up instructions.

posted by Marion @ 1:38 PM