What are you supposed to do – really?

You wake up startled out of deep sleep near 3:00am on a weeknight to the sounds of “GET YOUR FUCKING HANDS IN THE AIR! GET DOWN ON THE GROUND” Men are shouting and you hear the screech of tires. You in your partially REM state assume it is the police. You don’t even realize that you’re assuming at this point. You wonder what could possibly be going on? A drug bust? They’re catching somebody doing something wrong you guess and opt to stay away from your window and curl up in an even tighter ball against the wall and fall back to sleep.

You mention this to a couple friends, don’t check the papers and of course don’t have a tv so don’t even bother with news coverage. At a staff meeting the following Friday you are asked to share a scary moment with the group at your table (in the spirit of the upcoming spooky holiday). You can think of nothing to relate, nothing that actual scared you that would make for a good story and instead decide to relate of when you were last really startled, a couple of days prior around 3 in the morning. Your table seems overly impressed with your sharing and you quickly feel like and ass upon hearing of a group members memories of daily bombing while living in Iran.

Every so often in the week following it pops into your mind – the loud shouts – then you find this story upon a daily scan of the strib. Was it Tuesday morning you woke up? The proximity of the crime to your window (cracked open for the cool fall air) through which you heard the yells has passed beyond startling to downright scary. You should have called the cops. Your karma is f*’d to say the least.