Strangers In The Night

Ahhh...quiet has arrived temporarily. I have a moment to compose my thoughts. Alas, my brain seems to have fallen victim to stage fright. Those thoughts that have swirled in my head no longer want to be released from their hidden place to become a piece of cyberland.

Well, guess I will have to resort to the telling of a story that happened recently.

There have been some recent burglaries in our area. The first we heard about it was from an officer knocking on our door at 12:30a.m. Of course the kids and I were still up, but hubby was asleep.) The sheriff officer wanted us to shut our garage door. He told us of the burglaries and said most of the burglaries had occurred at homes where the garage was open. He happened to be driving through the neighborhood, so stopped to tell us. (Hey, maybe I can get hubby to get that garage door opener fixed now!)

The next day a frightening thought came. Just the night before, the girl next door was over. When it was time to go, my daughter Sb walked her home. They were only out the door briefly when they came running back into the house. They thought someone was outside and started to run after them. They were afraid to go back outside. We had written it off that they both were a little afraid of the dark. But now we were wondering, could someone have been out there?

Last week, Chris, my son came home from college for a week. His girlfriend had just returned from a semester abroad. He was sitting on my front porch at 3:30a.m. talking on the phone to her. While sitting there, he noticed a guy walking down the street. The guy starts walking through our yard between our house and the neighbors. So my son yells out, "hey! What are you doing?" The guy takes off running, with Chris running after him. Chris was wearing flip flops, so had a hard time keeping up. The guy cut through a neighbors yard 3 houses down.

Chris called the police and they came out. They talked to him and also to the neighbors whose yard the guy disappeared in. (And can you believe, hubby and I slept through the whole thing? We didn't hear about it until the next day.

So now we aren't sure if it was the burglar scoping out the neighborhood, or if "stalker boy" is back and was headed towards the back of our house where El's bedroom is. (For those who don't know, that is a another story. I'll pull it up some other time when my brain decides to be shy.)

Either way, I am thankful that Chris was sitting outside on his cell phone at 3:30a.m. Next time I start to complain about my kids staying up so late at night, I will think twice. Who knows, maybe there is a real good reason they are up.