rekkidblogga

You missed it

Everyone missed it except me.

My down the street neighbor who chased the kid missed it. The mom missed it. By the time the policeman rolled up leisurely in his patrol car, he'd missed it.

Let me correct myself here. Everyone missed it except me -- and the two people right in it.

The thing is, when something like that happens you're almost too stunned to act. It's like you have a feeling that things are heading south -- you don't really know why, exactly -- and you try to go about your business like you're wrong, that you're just imagining things even though later you realize that some of the signs were right there in front of you.

Maybe, unconsciously, you didn't want to get involved in the first place. You didn't want to notice anything out of the ordinary.

But it happened and you saw it. You weren't looking for it. You weren't rubbernecking at the build-up because when was there time for any build-up? It happened so fast and still to this day you remember every minute of it like you were seeing it for that horrible first time, the time you didn't believe -- almost couldn't believe -- what you were seeing. Because things like that don't happen where you live, right? You know that it happens but it happens where you can't see it. You may see the results; you don't see the awful cause.

And when you see it going on you know it's all happening so quickly but those movies we see aren't lying. It's like time slows down in your mind. Because your mind is trying to make sense of the bizarre. It's burned there, forever. You don't always think about it but occasionally it comes back to you for whatever reason and you remember how it felt to be in the moment back then, unsure of what to do but knowing you had to do something.

You don't expect to see the teenage girl down the street and her boyfriend strolling along hand in hand, talking, and by the time you get in your house and turn around to look out your screen door, see that boy raise his fist high above his head and lay a crushing hammer blow on the side of that girl's face.

You don't expect to see him then chase her across your street, up your neighbor's yard where she falls down and he kicks her while he calls her every combination of "f***ing b**ch" and *g**damn whore" he can think of.

You don't expect to see her crying and screaming hysterically as he runs away.

You don't expect to find the phone pressed tightly against your ear, listening as the 911 operator tells you as calmly as she's been trained that yes, you should go outside to make sure she's okay but to make absolutely sure that he's gone before you do it so that you don't get hurt.

You don't expect to find yourself across the street, hugging this girl you knew as a little kid but now only know as a troubled teenager while she continues weeping hysterically, screaming "He's going to kill me! He's going to kill me!"

You don't expect to hear yourself telling her that no, he isn't, and that it's going to be okay.

You don't expect her to calm down eventually, then argue with her mother once mom gets there and lays into her for seeing this boy. You really don't expect mom to rip into you for calling the police, but she does.

You don't expect the girl to get up and walk away in the opposite direction from where her boyfriend ran off. You don't expect mom to apologize to you, but she does. You expect mom to go after her daughter, but she doesn't.

You don't expect the lackadaisical attitude the policeman appears to have about the whole thing once he finally gets there -- late.

You never expected to be the only person left sitting there in your neighbor's yard, across the street from your house, a half-hour after you got home from college, amazed at what you just saw happen right in your neighborhood to someone who lives down the street from you, wondering why no one else seemed to give a damn -- not even the girl.

You never expected, after all these years, to still care enough to write something down about that strange afternoon.

But you did.

posted by rekkidbraka @ 12:49 AM