to the curb

I sat on a curb in the parking lot yesterday for about 35 minutes and took these pictures with my phone.



I had been in the bathroom when I heard pounding on the front door, the rattling of the knob, and then some more pounding. Once I got my skivvies up, I nervously peered through the peep hole out the front door and saw two men in uniforms with guns. One said, "The building is secure" into a walkie talkie. Yee gads! So I threw on a bra, grabbed my purse, and headed out the door. One of the men asked if I "didn't hear the pounding?" implying that I was a deaf idiot, to which I wanted to respond with "I was on the toilet, jerk!" but instead said, "I was in the bathroom, sir!" I didn't say that last part, but I was intimidated. He explained that there was a gas leak right behind my apartment and that everyone was to evacuate immediately. That was that.

I was reminded of a summer night when Liz, Andy, and I were sleeping out on the trampoline back home in PA. Probably around 2 a.m., we awoke to a bright light that flooded our yard and blinded us from seeing its source. We could see only the silhouette of a man as he approached and asked us, "Where is the green box?" Squinty-eyed and groggy, we said we didn't know (and had no idea what he was talking about)... and he faded back into the light and was gone as quickly as he had come. We joked about him being an alien because we didn't have a logical explanation for him until our mom shed her own light on the situation, explaining that he was probably an electrician or something. Why he needed to come in the middle of the night, we have no idea. But man, the imagination can go wild when information is lacking.

One of the firemen asked me if I was a terrorist because I had been taking pictures of their truck. I said I just thought the knobs and gadgets were pretty. See what I mean?