The Pre-Date Freak Out

We kissed our kids good-bye and left them in the hands of our neighborhood babysitter and headed out for an evening of good food, uninterrupted adult conversation and super heroes battling to save the Universe. As we backed out of our driveway, the garage door refused to close. It's automatic so that's kind of it's job once the button is pushed. But on this night, it would not budge. So my husband jumped out of the car to try to fix it as I sat huddled closely to the heater on this particularly frigid night. I noticed a police car park one house down on my left with its blue and red lights flashing. It was just sitting on the street but it hadn't pulled anyone over.

Strange.

Jake decided to manually slam the garage shut from the inside. The headlights of our sedan amplified the whiteness of the door like a giant blank canvas. And just then a tall, teenage boy in a black beanie and all black clothes darted between the car and the garage door and jumped our short, wooden fence into my backyard.

He was running from the police. But they didn't see him. I did.

He was having trouble moving quickly because his pants were sagging too low. And so I lept from the car and stood in my driveway, frozen. Not from the arctic night air, but because I was watching someone run into MY yard which is connected to MY house where MY babies were with their tiny teenage babysitter.

I screamed.

I screamed at the top of my lungs because I didn't know what else to do. Chase him and hope he didn't have a gun? That I could stop him from trying to get into my house and take some hostages?

I screamed "stop" repeatedly, as loud and as long as I could until Jake threw open the garage to try to figure out what was happening to me. I told him someone just jumped the fence and he ran into the house just as the policeman arrived at my gate. He radioed for back up.

And I still stood in my driveway. Stuck. Helpless.

Does he want me to open the gate for him? Why isn't he going after that kid?

I left the car running and ran straight into the house. I wanted to make sure everyone was safe. And they were.

It's hard to conceal my panic sometimes, but I try and generally do a decent job. But Sophie is a mini-me and she quickly started freaking out as well. Was he still in our yard? Could he get in the house?

I doubted he still was since he was evading the police. But it gave me great pleasure to tell her that ALL the doors and ALL the windows were locked. I knew that they were.

I knew it because I didn't come from the best neighborhood. I grew up locking everything that I didn't want stolen. And even then we still had hoodrats break into our vehicles at night and tag our cars. My parents had to call 911 a few times when prowlers and drunken neighbors were in our backyard. I saw more than my fair share of illegal guns, drugs and beat downs on the street. The ghetto bird was a common appearance at night.

It wasn't the worst place to live, but it wasn't safe.

And so the lessons I learned in my youth, helped me feel better about tonight. I knew my house was locked up tight with my kids safe inside. This is the Chicago area, and picking a safe neighborhood is pretty important. We chose to live here because of the amazingly low crime statistics.

But low doesn't mean zero.

It only took a few seconds for more police to arrive on our street. There were at least six vehicles racing around the block trying to find this kid. I don't know if he was wanted for petty crime or violent crime. But it makes no difference to me. All I see is a threat to the safety I have tried to build for my family.

After a while, my husband was able to calm me down and convince me that there was no immediate danger and so we left on our date and continued to check in with the babysitter and our neighbors.

I walked the babysitter home in the dark, cold night and felt different, though I'd done it dozens of times before and never felt unsafe. I was on high alert. I looked at the spot where I'd seen the young man jump into our backyard and replayed the sound of my scream, primal...ripping its way from my body into the air, alerting my husband, the police, anybody, somebody to please help. I can feel my throat still sore from the experience. I don't think I've ever screamed like that before.

And here it is the middle of the night. I've been tossing in my bed for hours, but the adrenaline won't leave me and I keep wondering how safe we really are. Is it possible I'm overreacting about some kid jumping our fence as he ran from the cops? Probably. I do have a tendency to be dramatic. But this incident truly has me freaked out. It's causing flashbacks of what I've seen and urging my imagination play out all the different types of danger we could find ourselves in and how we could possibly prepare for all of them. But that's just it, we can't. There is no way to possibly prepare for every single scenario. All I can do is my best. Even if all that is, is to scream.