You People

25 OCT 06

I hope none of my neighbors read this blog…

About this time last year, someone broke into my house (while I was HOME), and stole a bunch of my stuff – about $2000 worth. I started talking about it to my neighbors and many of them said they had similar experiences.

Last week, I go to the city council meeting. Mr. Mayor is presiding over a hearing as to whether or not to let my neighborhood install gates. Needless to say, I was there to vote in favor. It turns out that about 80% of my neighbors were also in favor. Arguments against were basically that they didn’t want to seem elitist. Whatever.

Well, there was one dude who said that it was obvious to him that the thefts were coming from WITHIN the neighborhood, so the gates would have no effect.

Huh?

Turns out I knew what he was talking about. Two weeks ago, my next door neighbor (let’s call him Bill) was teaching himself to rollerblade and tripped in front of crazy neighbor’s house just as he was pulling out of the driveway. The crazy neighbor rolled down his window and started yelling at Bill saying, “Why are you staring in my garage? Are you casing my house? You better not try and steal my stuff!”

Now, let me say that Bill is rather well-off. He was so shocked by this that he was speechless. Now fast forward to the city council. Crazy neighbor gets up in front of all my other neighbors and the mayor and says we don’t need the gates because he knows the thefts are coming from within (the call is coming from within your house!), not without.

Now it’s Bill’s turn to speak. He starts in about wanting the gates. He’s about done, when he looks over his shoulder at crazy neighbor and says that he wasn’t going to say anything, but, guess what? It was him who was looking in the garage. He wasn’t “casing the joint.” He was looking for a place to bleed to death.

It would have been fine if it ended there. We were already convinced that the other guy was nuts. But then, Bill continues…

“You people need to watch yourselves,” he threatened.

You people? Did I mention that crazy guy is black and Bill is white?