Of Clowns, Crisis and Life Medic Bracelets

Yesterday, B informed me that I had failed as the nosy neighbor. ME! Failed!

B: You know, since your office window faces the street, I would expect you to pay a bit more attention as to what is going on down there.

Me: What is going on down there?

B: I don't know...only 2 police cars RIGHT OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE.

And there were. Two police cars, parked the wrong way in front of our house. The policemen, however, were nowhere to be found.

Me: Where are they?

B: I don't know.

Me: What are they doing?

B: Something about an alarm.

Me: Huh. Someone's house alarm has been going off for some time.

That is when my mad observational skills kicked in, way after the fact as usual. I then recalled hearing the faint house alarm for quite some time and being mildly annoyed with it. Apparently not annoyed enough to go to the window to see what was going on. I am a fine neighbor.

However, after B had pointed it out to me, I was ON THE CASE. This meant I went from window to window to figure out what was going on. All I figured out was the neighbor that belonged to the house where the one police car was parked was totally nonplussed and sweeping away at his sidewalk. Truly, not a crisis by any means.

While passing by one of the windows, I noticed the nonplussed neighbor's wife come home. Nonplussed neighbor had gone into his home. First she attempted to pull into her driveway, but since the police car was blocking 3/4 of it, she really couldn't do that. After about 5 minutes of her staring blankly at the cop car, she turned around and parked on the street. She then proceeded to take her HEADPHONES off. Yes, she was wearing a full, huge set of headphones on IN THE CAR. Safety at its finest there. Then after a LONG 10 minutes, she finally got out of the car and made her way up to the house.

Let me review. Wife comes home to find a cop car, parked the wrong way, in front of her house blocking most of her driveway. Her husband is nowhere to be found but the broom and rake he was using are just laying there haphazardly on the ground. Yet, she takes 15 minutes to get into the house? I call that insanity and told B so:

Me: Mrs. Neighbor Lady just arrived home wearing clown makeup...

B: Clown makeup?

Me: Well not really, but she might as well have it was so bright and thick I could see it up here. Anyway, she tried to get into her driveway.

B: How did that work out for her?

Me: Not so well.

In the end, all was well. I saw two policemen leave laughing about a false alarm and another lady neighbor explaining something about a life medic bracelet shorting a house alarm? I am not sure. I stopped listening. As B said, it was way more exciting when we didn't know what was going on.

And I was a heck of a lot happier before I saw the clown.

Clowns scare me.