Hello Incident Report, it’s been a while. How sweet of you to drop by (now get out).

Arty-G came into town from Birmingham this evening. He clearly carried a big slice of the old B’ham in his pocket because I met him for a few drinks at his hotel and suddenly my life is once again party-party followed by incident report and, as a bonus round, an altercation with my neighbor. Seriously, for that kind of fun I should be paying only $550 a month for rent and having Buffalo Rock ginger ale whenever I want. I think the additional $500 a month I pay in Philly, plus the ginger ale deprivation should at least come with a party-party-but-no-incident-report lifestyle.

No such luck. The night started out pretty tame. I have only seen one other B’hamian since moving to Philly so I was pretty excited when I found out that Arty-G was coming up for a short work trip. I’ve been tired, tired, tired, lately and today I found out that while my thyroid is not cancerous, it may be infected from the biopsy and I have to start a course of antibiotics.

Let me pause for a second to say again that the result of my biopsy was BENIGN. I found this out officially on Monday. Now I smile, you can too if you want! Now I frown, and launch back into the rest of my story.

So…I wasn’t feeling well but I managed to slump through the rest of my day. I was looking forward to Arty-G but also a little worried that I would be too wiped to be any fun. He was late finishing dinner and so I was already in his hotel lobby bar (At the Ritz baby! Arty-G does it in style) when he came in. Oh! The happiness of, and on, his sweet face! On my face a big grin as well, reflecting the happy happiness of being known, not new, and loved (or as he would say lurrrved). We chat. We gossip. We eat stinky cheese and honey. We tell the bartender to make us a “Ben Franklin Slamma”, or a “Liberty Bell”, or a “Philadelphia Freedom” or an “Elton John”. We think we’re hilarious because none of these drinks exist on the menu (or anywhere for that matter) and the bartender gives us something that tastes a lot like pez candy, if pez was made with red bull. It costs us a lot of money to be that silly, since we are at the Ritz. I introduce Arty-G to Philly’s local gin, Bluecoat. He takes me up to his suite on the 29th floor to split a split of champagne (Ritz Champagne, Arty-G…naturally) where we can see teeny, far away Philadelphia under a big fat moon.

Yes. A Pez Franklin Slamma (whatever that was made of) followed by Gin followed by champagne. Only with Arty-G. I left the Ritz knowing that I will regret being out late, drinking any alcohol at all and drinking that alcohol in particular. But I also left feeling relaxed and happy to have seen a familiar face and even better, to have been a familiar face.

When the cab dropped me off at home I walked up to my front door and immediately called my mom. My leasing company recently rehabbed our front door and while it now looks amazing, it doesn’t really close. Unusually, both the inner and outer doors to my building were wide open and, as it was past midnight, I felt funny about going in alone. I should also add that to get to my door on the second floor I would have to walk by not one, but two empty apartments, both with open doors. Crreeepy, so I called my mom to ‘walk me to my door’.

I used to do this all the time with mom or B when I was coming home late from work in Birmingham. They would be quiet until I said, “I’m safe!” and then we would chat for a bit. In Birmingham, this was necessitated in part because I had a scary, antagonistic, relationship with my scary, antagonizing (likely drug-addicted, definitely crazy-ass-mean) downstairs neighbor. In Philly, however, I have no such relationships…until tonight.

I made it past the cavernous apartments, gave mom the “I’m safe!”, and we chatted about my evening. She was so happy that I had seen a friend that I didn’t even get scolded for drinking when I’m already sick. “I know I’m going to pay for this tomorrow” I tell her, “but it was really worth it anyway”. On that cheerful note, I said my goodnights and curled up to sleep the (not very restorative) sleep of the over imbibed.

About three hours later I woke up when I heard the downstairs door open and close. I was about to head back into la-la-land when I realized that someone was walking up and down the stairwell. Not up the stairwell, up and down the stairwell. On the third trip up I can hear men’s voices and then oddly, the third floor hall window opening. I got up and quietly went to my door. I could hear duct tape being pulled from a roll? The window closing? I looked out my peephole and saw a man coming back down the stairs while another man was just coming up the stairwell. It didn’t feel right, or it looked funny. I don’t know why I kept looking out the peephole except that mostly I knew if I walked back from my door, the floor would creak.

The two men stopped on the landing in front of my door. They conferred quietly for a moment and then the downstairs guy turned toward my door. He was looking right at me but didn’t realize it. He turned back to the upstairs guy and gestured to my door. I couldn’t make out his face, but I saw upstairs guy shake his head “no” just a little. Then downstairs guy turned back to my door and turned the handle.

WHAM! I hit the front door so they would know that I knew and RAN to my living room for my cell phone. The men yelled something through my front door but there was no f#@$ing way that I was getting close enough to that door to find out what it was. The police were there in five minutes or less. I watched for them out the front window and saw three cars race past my building. Flashbacks of standing on my porch in Birmingham after calling to report a break-in, watching police cars drive repeatedly past my house for an hour before they found the location.

But the Philly cops come back around quickly and I don’t have to wait long until they are in the building. I could hear them talking in firm voices to someone downstairs and when they came upstairs I called out through my front door. The officer who came to my door was in his 40’s, had a thick Philly accent and I felt instantly reassured. I told him what happened and he asked me to come downstairs.

“Why?” I ask.

“I’d like for you to take a look at somebody for me please” he says.

I knew this already. I could hear a man complaining loudly downstairs and I didn’t want to confront whoever it was. I walked down behind the officer to see…Yes! It’s upstairs guy #1! I hadn’t really made out his face but same bald head, same black jacket. Relief! And then…

Oh.

Shit.

It.

Is.

My downstairs neighbor.

He’s shaved off his head of thick hair since the first (and only) time that I met him. He’s handcuffed, being held by a second officer, and he’s pissed.

“Man, I live here!” he says.

“He lives here.” I say.

“You’ve got me handcuffed in my own home!”

The last comment was directed at me and I opened my mouth to apologize but here’s what came out instead:

“What the F@$ck did you think I was going to do? What did you think was going to happen when two grown-ass men start messing with my door in the middle of the night when I live alone? If it were your mother what would you tell her? You’d tell her to call! If it were your sister, what would you tell her? You’d tell her to call! If it were your grandmother, what would you tell her? You’d tell her to f@%ing call!”

The fright, and late hour (4:30 am) had turned me into The Great Reverend Doctor, complete with the booming volume. At that moment, I was every single one of my black aunties rolled into one, halleluiah and amen.

He’s still handcuffed, listening to me and politely nodding in agreement. He looks contrite. I ruin my sermon by finishing with:

“Jesus! I’m sorry to inconvenience you.”

I went back upstairs with the first officer. He and the other cop had waited patiently while I stood on the stairs and yelled at my neighbor so I apologized to him as well. He stood in my hallway, politely ignored the pile of laundry on my bedroom floor, and told me that there was nothing to apologize for, that it was the middle of the night, I was clearly sound asleep and that he would have wanted his daughter to do the same thing. He took my name, birth date and phone number for the incident report, wished me a good night, and left.

Meanwhile, I could hear that my neighbor was still talking to the cop downstairs. I heard the officer say that they wouldn’t do anything about one call but not to get called about again. I retreated to my living room and this computer.

It’s 6:30 in the morning now. I’m not sure that I’ll get back to sleep. I hate the thought of living in another situation where I don’t feel safe because of my neighbor. Or where I feel bad for having antagonized a neighbor.

Here’s the thing. It was embarrassing, yes. But a few things are still bothering me. Why didn’t my other neighbors wonder about all the yelling in the hallway? What was he doing with the third floor hall window at 3 AM when he lives on the ground floor? Where did his friend go? What were they talking about on the second floor landing? What did that bartender put in the Ben Franklin Slamma that made it taste so much like pez?

But mostly what I’m wondering is…why were they trying to open my front door?

When last we met...

So again, a long time since the last entry. Both of my fans (me and my mom) have stopped checking the site. I blame my lack of updates on two events in January:

1) I started dating CNK again.
2) A week after we got back together my house was broken into and my computer stolen.

I am not saying that there was any kind of causal relationship between those two events. CNK is an engineer and not a crack-head.

Please don't write in to tell me that not all crack-heads will steal your computer and that not all engineers won't...I know.

Regardless, I'm pretty sure that if CNK had broken into my house and stolen my computer he would have given it back by now because I definitely made him, and everyone around me, sorry that it happened.

So now it's July, nearly August, and here is the update in abridged form:

January 2008 - CNK and I give it another go. I am thrilled. I get ready to make him a "so-glad-we're-back" dinner and come home with a bag full of groceries to find my front door has been smashed in with a shovel. I know it's a shovel because I don't own the one inside my front door and my neighbor is missing the one she keeps on our shared front porch. She was home at the time that it happened but just "figured [I was] making a lot of noise at the front door". I think she must have been confusing me with her roommate who installed a full drum kit beneath my study. I call CNK and B to come rescue me. Neighbor and her roommate also hang around with us. Cops take TWO hours to show up and three phone calls. We all freeze on the porch while the squad car drives past us and doesn't stop.

On my third call, the dispatcher asks me if there is any kind of landmark that the officer can look for. "There are five people standing on the front porch waving and shouting at cop cars" I tell her. Among the items stolen were: my computer, my DVD player, my backpack, my ability to shut the front door for two days, my ability to sleep comfortably in the apartment for one month, and a half-full bottle of Chambord raspberry liquor.

February 2008 - I don't really remember anything of significance. I mean, it's not like my house got broken into again. Oh, CNK takes me on an awesome valentines date. We have the worst meal ever but it's so bad that we laugh about it the whole time and then he takes me to a show at the Virginia Samford. It was fun but we get sleepy and so leave early to sit by his apartment's pool, wrapped in jackets, eating jelly beans and chatting.

March 2008 - - People continue to not break into my house. I really appreciate it.

April 2008 - B turns 28. This is infuriating because I have been getting even deeper into my 30's and he's still only in his 20's. Jerk. CNK and I throw him a little sushi birthday bash and we all have a great time.
In addition, CNK takes his PE exam so suddenly we can see each other more often and not only from 10pm-10:30pm on Fridays. It is a difficult adjustment but we make it. I have a successful committee meeting where they tell me I have enough to graduate in December! YES!...(spoiler alert, the July entry will dash all excitement you may have for me). My friend DP comes for a visit and we see Allison Kraus and Robert Plant which was surprisingly fabulous.

May 2008 - I try to write a paper. I fail. I try to write a paper. I fail. I try to write a paper. I fail. I try to write a paper. I fail. My boss yells at me. I yell at her and then cry. I try to write a paper. I fail.

June 2008 - - Everybody moves or gets married. I help CNK move. He helps his friends move. My friend's Lx2 get married, I miss the wedding because my cousin gets married in ATL on the same day. My mom comes out for the cousin's wedding. We also see our dearest old family friends and spend an entire day in IKEA. It's my birthday month. I refuse to get my hopes up and end up having a truly nice time, making a large dinner of crab legs and salmon, which I don't eat...I'm a vegetarian. I receive absolutely lovely gifts from everyone. Wine, cookies, shoes, serving bowls, a backpack to replace the one that was stolen, bookcases, flowers, and paper masks of my face mounted on bendy straws that say on the back "The world would be a better place if everyone was a little more like M---"
I'm very relieved that they say "a little more" because it saves us all the trouble of picturing the petty, stressed-out, crabby, snarky horror that would be if the world were a LOT more like me.

Most significant though, my distant cousin, Mgn, dies. I find out at the wedding when I ask after her as I was expecting that we would be at the same reception table. Her death was sudden and efficient, just like her. The funeral at Spelman College is amazing. Her family legacy is amazing. I get to see people who I will miss by not attending this year's family reunion and I wish I could thank her for the opportunity, as strange as that sounds.

July 2008 - Work continues. My training grant is renewed for a year and suddenly my mentor doesn't think I'll finish in December. Now it seems like it will be next June but I'm sure that has nothing to do with the additional six months of free funding. More people move. CNK and I help his sister in T'loosa and his friend in B'ham. I try to write a paper...I sort of manage but not really. I collect more data, it's actually decent.

And there it is, seven months in a nutshell. Nothing to it. As of this morning my house was still okay. I think it helped to remove the shovel from the porch and to get a real doorframe that's not made out of rotten wood. I haven't replaced the computer or the chambord but it's been really nice to have a backpack again.

If you get a chance, check out the links to my cousin Mgn. She really was an amazing woman and worth knowing.

I'll write again soon, or at least in the next seven months. Honest.

In my perfect world you always know to cut the red wire first.

February-ish 2007

(old post from the myspace)

Yesterday I started to write a new blog entry. It started like this: Well, it's been ages since my last entry but I haven't had any misdemeanors to report.

It's like I willed it to happen. I finished the first sentence and then walked into the lab tissue culture room to set some media warming while I finished my blog. The three other graduate students who I work with were already in the room.

"Just ask everyone!" one student was saying to another.

"Nooooo, that's too weird" the other one replied.

"Ask people what?" I asked.

The first student turned to me and said, "She had some NutriGrain bars and a magazine in her desk that went missing. You haven't seen them have you?"
I laughed and said that I hadn't. Because I'm a jerk I asked what flavor the bars were and told her that she shouldn't have gay porn magazines in her desk anyway. Then, because I'm a really big jerk, I offered to sell the missing bars back to her at a considerable mark-up. The whole point was to tease my labmate about the possibility of someone stealing three NutriGrain bars out of her desk. I mean…they aren't even tasty. She took it in good humor so I asked around the rest of the lab. No one had the NutriGrain bars. The magazine turned out to be a Dell Computers catalogue so that also seemed like a pretty lame item to steal.

We were in the middle of writing a message on a board in the hallway ("did you enjoy the Nutrigrain bars and the Dell Magazine?") and continuing to tease my labmate about her loss (maybe the thief has a crush on you and they are making a shrine!) when a technician in our lab mentioned that she was missing some popcorn out of her desk too. I am really fortunate to work with people whom I trust and respect so at no point did any of us think that it was the work of somebody actually in the lab but we did start to feel creeped out.

I sat down to finish my blog entry, now with exciting news to report, and decided to put my ipod on for inspiration. My ipod was not in my desk and neither was the cord that goes with the ipod, nor the earphones. I informed my boss and called campus police. The man on the other end of the line told me that it might be a while. Half an hour went by and our post-doc discovered that his laptop was missing. Another graduate student was missing a T-shirt and a pair of socks from a desk. Now I felt terrible for teasing about the NutriGrain bars.

I called the police to report the other thefts. We were informed that it would be a while longer before someone could come out to take our report but they couldn't tell us how long it would be.

"Look" the officer said "I don't want to tell you that it will be ten minutes if it might be eleven".

I tell him that we can handle waiting for an extra minute; it's the difference of hours that we're trying to ascertain.

"Yeah, I can't tell you that." He says that the UAB police were all dealing with an incident and they wouldn't be able to help us any time soon. We decide to leave. One of my labmates gives me a ride to my car and on our way there we can see that two city blocks are barricaded and completely saturated with emergency vehicles. Here is what they were doing instead of taking our report…

**************
Police Detonate Suspicious Package At UAB
Friday, Jan 26, 2007 - 12:15 PM by Chris Pallone
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Just after four on Thursday, UAB students left their classes and discovered chaos.
Police got a report of a 'suspicious package' inside the engineering building at the corner of 11th avenue and 13th street south. Streets around many UAB buildings, including the Alys Stephens center, were back open about three hours after the bomb scare ended.

The scare disrupted rush hour traffic, students couldn't get to their cars or classes.

Birmingham and UAB police shut down at least six blocks of the University's downtown campus.

Fire trucks, Haz-Mat vehicles and police cars were scattered everywhere.

Curious onlookers didn't know what was going on.

"I didn't know what to make of it. I just hoped it wasn't in the building I was in." said Heather Torbert a UAB student.

Heather Torbert soon learned police were investigating a suspicious package. Someone had discovered what looked like a bomb in a knapsack, just inside the entrance of a UAB engineering building.

A bomb squad member dressed in a heavy protective suit went in and out of the building several times examining the device. Around 6:30 p.m., they pulled it out onto 13th street and destroyed it.

"We did trigger the device and it turned out not to be real," said Henry Irby from the Birmingham Police Department.

Police say it was a hoax, something meant to look like a real bomb.

For two hours, police prevented Heather Torbert from getting to her car but she finally left campus, glad that nothing bad came from the tense situation.

"It's scary. It's scary. It really is," she said.

Tonight, the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is leading the investigation into who put this fake bomb in the engineering building, and why."
******************

Why did they blow the backpack up first? In my perfect world the bomb squad would have opened the bag first. I've seen how to do it on TV, you sweat buckets and shake and then you cut the red wire…or is it the blue?

Anyway, in my perfect world:
The bomb squad opens the bag, the air is tense. The lead member of the squad is training a rookie. She's tough but attractive and there has been plenty of jockeying for power position mixed with a little sexual innuendo. They will no doubt sleep together later.

"What do you see rookie?" That's what he calls her. Later, when they move past the animosity she'll ask him to call her by her first name but for now she's just 'rookie'.

"I don't know!" she's shaking but trying to hide it.

"Look, you've got to do this. It's now or never." He's unforgiving.

"Jesus" she says, almost under her breath. "It's…wait."

"There's no time! ID the wires and get them cut NOW!"

He starts to move towards her but she puts her hand up, waving him away.

"I've got an ID. It appears to be an ipod, a laptop that runs on a Japanese operating system, several NutriGrain wrappers, a computer catalogue and a pair of socks."

"GET OUT ROOKIE!! The wrappers are a fuse; it's the Kellogg's cereal bomber. Grab the ipod and GET OUT NOW!"

We see her spring to her feet, ipod in hand, running as if her life depends on it. Her life does depend on it and just as she reaches the safety perimeter the ipod starts to play the Carter Family's 'Let the circle be unbroken'. The backpack explodes. She is thrown into his arms. There is an awkward moment while they look at each other. He releases her and says,

"Good job saving that ipod. The jerk who built that bomb didn't deserve to have such a great collection of tunes. I mean, this thing has got the Carter Family and Nina Simone for chrissakes"

She looks him dead in the eye, confident again.

"Yeah, I guess we're looking for someone who is crazy but has regular bowel movements"

He gives her a questioning look but there is a tinge of respect starting to shine through his eyes.

"Well, the way I figure it, you'd have to be crazy to blow up even a single David Bowie track and those NutriGrain bars will...excuse my french sir...give you the shits."

And that's just the way it happened in my perfect world. Oh, and I want my damn ipod back.

I miss you honey and I can't wait to hear the news of your most recent incident report

Thursday, November 16, 2006

(old blog from the myspace)

I haven't really talked to my best friend since her birthday in early October. We had a falling out in August and recovery has been slow at best. This is a woman with whom I can have a four hour discussion every Saturday even when absolutely NOTHING has taken place in the intervening week. So it has been strange not to communicate with her but then, for a while, talking was even stranger. We've been trying to reconnect and have been playing a little half-hearted phone tag as a result. She's got a new beau to keep her busy and I'm dating graduate school (no, not SOMEONE at graduate school or the WHOLE graduate school. Basically, 'graduate school' is my surly, crappy, boyfriend and it keeps me busy) so it has been easy to avoid an actual conversation.

I don't normally mention this kind of thing much in a venue like the web-log. It is personal, and not just to me, so I won't say much more about it…except, one way that she has been able to keep up with me as I go incommunicado is to read my blog. The danger in judging my life by the blog is that I appear spend my days going from a party to witnessing a misdemeanor to another party and so on. It's kind of disturbing and I hadn't noticed the trend until she called me last night. I was glad to see her number on my cell phone and, although I was otherwise engaged, I answered her call.

"Hey, I'm not ignoring you but can I call you right back? I'm busy."
"Sure!" She sounded cheerful, "What's going on?"
"I'm filling out an incident report with police"
"Again?" she said.
"What?"
"Well I just got done reading your blog."
"Ah, right. Yeah, again. I'll call you right back, kay?"

This is why it is important to keep your dear friends around for the rest of your life. If you lose them, then who will remind you of the patterns in your world? I would have completely missed the point that I was participating in an incident report for the second time in less than two weeks. I was caught up in the moment.

That particular 'moment' had started about 45 minutes before the incident report. I was watching TV. It was showing me a story about a man who wakes up every day in the same day but with the ability to affect different (violent) outcomes. I liked it; it's a lot like graduate school. You wake up every day with a sense of what you are going to do differently to achieve success and instead you learn six new ways to screw up your data. But back to last night, there was a lot of noise in the TV show that sounded like a windshield being bashed in with a baseball bat so when that same noise was talking place outside my apartment, I didn't notice it at first.

When the TV switched to showing me a commercial of children smiling in silence I realized that there was something wrong on my street. I jumped up and looked out my living room window to see if my car was okay. It was. Then I looked across the street just as a man who had been crouching on the ground looked up at me and started running down the street. I ran to my back room and watched him run. He made relatively slow progress since it was raining and he had chosen to run down one of the few really steep streets in Birmingham.

I ran back to my front of room to pull on a pair of jeans and to call my downstairs neighbor. She came outside with me and we went over to the car in question. To my surprise, it looked fine and for a second I felt sort of silly. Other neighbors were coming out of their apartment buildings including my neighbor, Fred-the-Grillmaster.

"Ohhhh, lookit that tire!" someone said and then I saw it. The front tire of the car, a cobalt blue mustang, had been punctured. Looking down the street we could see another car that had lost its front tires and was pointing nose-down into the asphalt. I was surprised that it made so much noise to slash a tire. It was a dull popping sound and I had expected to see broken windshields when I heard it. I called the police and told them that we thought we had seen the guy who was responsible; they said they would be right out.

By the time the police arrived the mustang had finished sinking into the road. Three of its tires were slashed as were three tires on the SUV a few cars down. One of the neighbors knew who owned the SUV so the owner was now standing out in the street with us. He was barefoot and wearing a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. I don't say this to criticize his outfit, (I was wearing an oversized, bright red Dale Earnhardt Jr. nightshirt over my jeans) but rather to point out that he was mad enough that the rain didn't even seem to faze him. The mustang belonged to his girlfriend.

When this piece of information was revealed, the rest of the neighbors all exchanged a look. Fred asked Mr. SUV if he and Ms. Mustang had any enemies. Mr. SUV swore that this was not a possibility, they had just moved to Birmingham and no one knew his girlfriend's car. Fred tried to look like he believed Mr. SUV. It was funny to watch the two men interact. Mr. SUV was about 6'4", white, and extremely skinny. Fred is black, about 5'7" and weighs around 300 pounds. He had just returned from his job as a janitor and, because he walks to work, he was wearing a yellow rain jacket that reached his past his calves and a matching yellow rain hat. Imagine the love child of Paddington Bear and the Gordon's Fishsticks Fisherman.

The police officer who showed up only contributed confusion to our little group. He was fairly young, early 30's at the most. He walked over to the first car and said,
"Oh, geeze! Oh man! What is WRONG with people? That guy must have been a real slimeball; I mean…that's a MUSTANG!"

This was not encouraging to hear since: a) he must have learned his dialect from watching the Andy Griffith show and b) the murder rate in Birmingham has jumped in the last month to several killings a week. One might imagine that there are more disturbing things happening in the city than a few slashed tires but then, maybe it is different when it is a mustang. I'm not really a car girl.

When he was done riling up the car owners with more exclamations of regret, the police officer took our statements. We gave him conflicting descriptions (he was tall/ short/ white/ black/ young/ older/ clean-cut/ had a mustache) and when we were finished he asked each of us if the guy looked like "a real wacko" or "a total slimeball".

Frankly, I was starting to suspect the police officer. Who says "slimeball" and "real wacko" under the age of 60?

It was around this time that my best friend called. I was giving my home address to the officer and I stuck around for a few minutes just to see if Ms. Mustang and Mr. SUV would own up to who might have slashed their tires. There were two cars parked in between theirs and a total of about twenty cars on the street which were left unharmed, pretty coincidental coincidence. However, no additional gossip was revealed so I went back into my house in time to see the hero of the TV show wake up once more to the same day only this time he had been shot in his chest.

The TV ended the story, changing to Birmingham local news and a trial involving a triple homicide. I turned the sound off and thought about how I would write about the tire slashing in this blog and what I would say to my friend when I called her back. There have been a few other happenings in my life aside from parties and misdemeanors. A little bit of stress, some academic failure, some academic success, a sinus infection, some old heartbreak and a few funny stories along with worries from the family at home. Somehow those things have gotten left behind when we try to talk lately. My phone rang and it was her.

"Hi!" she said, "So I couldn't wait to hear about your latest incident report! Wait, are you okay? What happened?"
"Oh, it was no big deal. Someone had their tires slashed and I saw the guy. I think it was the police officer drumming up business for himself or maybe a jilted lover getting revenge. It doesn't matter really."

I gave her the synopsis of the evening. She told me her reaction to the Greyhound bus story. We paused. It was there again, that sticking point. For several minutes I talked while I stuffed my mouth with an entire roll of Mentos, three at a time. We chattered a little, making inane jokes, and then I finally took a deep breath and said, "You know, really things are okay. I'm mostly fine these days. There have been one or two things going on though. Listen…."

And she did.

Since when do you have a crack baby?

November 10th, 2006

(old post from the myspace)

Last week I went to Nashville for a conference. I gave my first talk at a national meeting. I did not burp into the microphone so by my standards it was a roaring success. There are other things I would like to tell you about that meeting but I can't. I want to keep my job. Just know that, if you ever have a chance to go line dancing with about 60 scientists, you should do it.

What I can tell you is that our banquet was held in the Country Music Hall of Fame. I love that place. If you think that American culture is a compilation of the lowest common denominators (Brad Paisley, velveeta cheese, televised award shows) then this museum will blow you away. Early country music was full of color and energy. Some of the people involved were flat ugly to look at but so sweet to hear. My favorite exhibits at the museum: Koko Taylor videos (Fujiyama Mamma) and Elvis' car with recording equipment in the back seat and real crushed diamonds and gold in the paint. Okay, so maybe some of America's culture was built on some wildly tacky sh*t but as far as low denominators go, ours can be pretty cool.

Of course, there are those lowest common denominators which do not make it into the Country Music Hall of Fame. I'm convinced that those particular "denominators" are all on their way down to Orlando, Florida via the Greyhound Bus. Which brings me to this question- If you could be in any one of the following three places would you prefer to be:

1) Walking at night in Birmingham's Five Points neighborhood when a strange man pulls out his penis and shakes it at you.

2) At your ex-boyfriend's wedding while his mother tells you how forgettable you were/are.

3) On a Greyhound bus heading towards Huntsville, Alabama.

If you picked anything other than the Greyhound bus you were correct. The last day of the conference I decided to skip my ride home with the boss and stick around Nashville for a few extra hours. I have a good friend who lives there and we hadn't had much time to catch up during the conference. We checked out the Vanderbilt campus and then had a nice lunch. I had already reserved my bus ticket for later that afternoon but we got to the bus station early just to be safe.

I was filling out luggage ID tags when we overheard one side the following cell phone conversation: "Well just send me some money. No….send me some money. I have to get out of here! No. No. I can't stay here okay? No I can't go back there. I already TOLD you, if I go back to Alabama I'll be arrested, they got a warrant out for me. Well forget that. He owes me a shit-load of money, just take a hundred, hundred-fifty bucks out of the register and wire it to me! Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? F@CK!"

My friend and I exchanged a look. All I could think was that at least phone-dude wouldn't be on my bus because I was definitely going back to Alabama. The man continued to make phone calls, demanding money and alternately cajoling then threatening to "get completely wasted" if the person on the other end didn't help him.

Meanwhile, two little boys were throwing themselves onto the filthy lobby floor, using their jackets to slid face first into each other. I couldn't figure out who had brought them. There were a number of lethargic men and women in the vicinity but no one seemed to be looking at the boys. They had something about the way their faces were formed that suggested low birth weight and fetal drug addiction. My friend and I stood next to each other for a minute, not saying anything, just taking it all in. "What are you thinking?" I asked him. He raised his eyebrows and said "I'm thinking that I've never been so freaked out in a place before and I just spent a month alone in Africa."

We didn't say much for the rest of the wait. I kept insisting that I was fine and that he could go and he would look around the lobby, smile tightly, and insist that he didn't mind staying. I was relieved when we could finally line up for the bus and he could be released from his uncomfortable vigilance. We said goodbye and I promised to call when I got in. "So if you don't call…by what time should I assume that you've been murdered?" he asked.

No one sat next to me on the bus. The floor-sliding boys were there, just a few seats behind me. They had an old woman and a ten-year-old girl with them. The smaller of the two boys was about four or five. He was having a hard time sitting still. His grandmother grabbed him by the throat and pushed his head back into the seat. He was gagging and she was growling into his upturned face "You sit down you hear me you sit down you hear me you sit down you hear me you sit down you WILL sit down do you hear me…" She finally released his head with a final push into the seat. Able to breathe again, he started coughing and crying which only earned him a slap. I sent a text message to my friend "woman on bus hitting child thanks for lunch was great!"

The bus started out of the station and we were informed that we couldn't smoke, take illegal drugs or consume alcohol. Someone opened a bottle of nail polish and the driver informed us that we couldn't do that either due to improper ventilation. The crack-babies were running up and down the aisle. Their grandmother vacillated between ignoring them, feeding them candy and hitting them. About 30 minutes into the ride, the littlest boy jumped into the seat next to me.

"Me a story" he said. He was holding the cover insert to an Avril Lavigne CD. There wasn't really a story there so much as several mopey pictures of a skinny white girl so I made one up. When we got to a picture of Avril lying on a cot I told him that the little girl was sleeping because she was tired from changing her clothes for all those pictures.
"She not sleepin' she dead" he told me.
"No, she's sleeping."
"She dead cause they kill her dead and she's dead".

He was a creepy little boy.

"Little boy, what is your name?" I asked him.
"L'boy, my name is li'l boy" he said.
"No, your name is not little boy. You must have a name, what do they call you?"
"My name IS LI'L BOY!" He seemed angry.
"I don't think so," I said.
"My name is LI'L BOY and yo name is UGLLLLYYY li'l Girl!"
At that point he looked very pleased with my facial expression and decided to crawl into my lap for a short nap.

My new crack baby had just wandered back to his grandmother when voices rose up from the back of the bus. I ignored them in case they were also proclaiming my homeliness. A man walked to the front of the bus and spoke to the bus driver but then went back to his seat. Moments later the voices rose again and this time I could make out someone saying, "I warned you!"

The man from the back of the bus came to the front again only this time he was yelling "Bus driver I told him and told him, it's about to go down!" The driver pulled the bus over. We were somewhere in Alabama, not yet to Huntsville, and it was early but completely dark outside. By the time the driver got out of his seat a fist fight had broken out. I called my friend to tell him that there was a fight on the bus and I might be a bit late getting home. Li'l Boy decided that this would be a perfect time to start running up and down the aisle again. When he ran by me I hauled him by the back of his pants into the seat next to me. I was afraid he would be trampled. I hung up on my friend and tried to keep LB-Crack Baby in his seat with the promise of cheetoes. He was indignant. His body went completely stiff and then completely limp as he threw himself into the aisle just in time to trip the bus driver on his way back up to the front. I sent him back to his grandmother and gave them the bag of cheetoes and a handful of starburst that were lurking in my book bag.

The fight seemed to be over and bus started moving again. When we pulled into the Huntsville station a few minutes later the police were waiting for us. The man blamed for instigating the fight turned out to be completely soaked in booze. How they even let him on the bus is a mystery to me. According to the people involved he had taken it upon himself to harass a nine year old boy who was traveling with his father. We waited for the police to arrest him and make an incident report before we finally loaded up again and headed for Birmingham.

I called my friend back to apologize for hanging up on him.
"Are you okay? What happened?" he asked.
"I had to get my crack baby out of the aisle to keep him from getting trampled" I explained.
"Since when do you have a crack baby?"
"Since this bus ride."
"You know, it's never boring when we hang out" he told me, but it didn't totally sound like a compliment.

The rest of the bus ride was more uneventful but stinky. A woman across the aisle from me talked to herself constantly in a low hiss but I tuned it out and fell asleep, clutching my purse. Strangely, no one sat next to me even though the bus was nearly full after Huntsville. Probably the fact that I had showered that very day was putting them off or maybe no one wanted to sit next to an ugly li'l girl. What ever it was, I was grateful. P picked me up at the station, wisely choosing to bring her big black dog. She warned me that he was in need of a bath but I just laughed.

"Trust me" I told her, "I can't smell a thing."