When I moved out of the ‘hood, I believed that the constant presence of police cars in my life was over.

I was so, so very wrong. Here in the idyllic suburbs, it appears that just beneath the smiling white surface lurks plenty of problems that keep the officers of the law plenty busy.

I have three little anecdotes that have happened just in the past two weeks.

Number one. The kids in the dead end (cul-de-sac if you’re fancy) have taken to playing with Airsoft guns. There is nothing soft about these guns, which shoot hard little pellets that could easily take out an eye and that leave actual welts on the body. I have discouraged the J-Man from playing with the kids when they are using these guns, but I know full well that he sneaks off and does it anyway, so I’m sure that I will soon be spending a happy day in the emergency room with my half-blind child.

Anyway, one afternoon, the kids were gleefully shooting at each other down in the dead end, and about a half an hour later I received a panicky phone call.

“MOM.”

“WHAT?”

“Mom. The cops are after me!!!” *sob*

“WHAT?!!!”

“Some lady called the cops on us, and we ran, and they’re chasing us!!”

Now I had problems with this for a multitude of reasons, primarily because he was playing with the damned guns and had run from the fucking police, but what was I to do?

“Turn yourself in.”

“NOOOOOOOO!” *sob* “They’ll take me to JAILLLLL!”

“They’re not going to take you to jail. You’re 12. Just come home.”

We went back and forth over this for about twenty minutes, but to make a long story short, the police called off their search for the dangerous juvenile criminals, and the fugitives made it back to their respective cribs without anyone getting capped or taken to the big house.

So, there was that.

Then, there was this. Last Saturday, the J-Man, bless his trouble-seeking soul, spent the night at a friend’s house. Said friend lives down in the dead end. Apparently that night a rogue band of teenagers were out playing mailbox baseball. Remember that from your rash youth? You take a baseball bat to a mailbox, and, SMASH.

Now, the next morning, my kid and his friend were outside playing with a couple of other kids, just when one of the victims of said mailbox vandalism discovered that her mailbox had been killed dead. She saw the kids playing, made an assumption, and promptly flipped out.

She called them everything from little bastards to little fuckers to fucking troublemaking Mexicans (a couple of kids were of the brown variety), and she immediately went over to one of the mother’s homes and began to curse her out.

Well, I never.

Upon hearing about this from the J-Man, I called the mother in question and got the skinny.

“She’s psychotic,” she said. “I’ve had problems with her before. She hates children. She once threw a ball at my son’s head because it landed in her yard. She accused me of stealing wood from her garage. She’s nuts. I called the cops.”

And the cops came. This is how little the police have to do in Buttfuck, Indiana – they arranged for some detectives to come and investigate the fallen mailbox. I imagine it was carefully dusted for prints and placed into an evidence bag.

Unreal.

Then the other night, at about two AM, the entire block lit up like a Christmas tree due to about five squad cars and a paddy wagon coming to curtail a domestic dispute across the street. There was screaming and yelling and carrying on, and someone was removed from the household in what I can best describe as a major fracas.

It’s just like being back in the ‘hood, except without the black people.

I think I’ve seen a black person here in Buttfuck once. He was wearing an argyle sweater.

In other news, the J-Man and my mother are having a fitness competition. They are attempting to see who can use the treadmill, lift weights, and do the most situps during the month of April. I’m happy that this has come to pass – for the J-Man because he sorely needs the exercise and for my mother because she needs weight-bearing exercise to manage her osteoporosis. So far the J-Man’s up to about a half hour on the treadmill at three miles per hour, and my mother is up to… fifteen minutes at 2.2 miles per hour. Well, every journey must begin with a small step. I think that she will work her way up as she goes.

In still other news, Skittles the cat has developed some sort of bizarre attachment disorder in which I cannot leave for one moment without her pounding on the door like a crazed lunatic.

She sleeps with me. She sits at my feet while I eat. She waits outside the door, scratching and crying, while I smoke. She sits in my lap while I use the computer or watch TV. She is no more than a foot away while I work out.

She has always been a happy, friendly cat who has wanted a lot of attention, but this is getting ridiculous. I feel like I have a baby.

An extremely furry, twenty-pound baby.

This morning there is a two-hour school bus delay due to intense fog, so the kids are out playing in the street. I predict that the cops will be called any second now, so I’m off to go look out the window like the nosy neighbor I am.

Happy Thursday.

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