Had a small incident tonight.

I’m chillin’ with Daughter in the house when Oldest rushes into the room and says, “Mom needs you, now.” Urgency there, I get up and go. Wife briefs me. There’s some dude hanging around the street-light a couple houses down. Gave Oldest the willies, and it was certainly odd behavior. Strange person, why would they just be hanging out at the street-light?

I head outside to check on things. I’m able to do a few things in the yard to look busy and otherwise occupied, but watching what the dude is up to. Then I see good neighbor across the street, who has a similar penchant for paying attention to the neighborhood goings on. I head over and we talk, as he too noticed the dude.

As we watched, dude’s behavior wasn’t too suspicious. Perhaps just waiting for someone to pick him up. But then it dragged on. We were standing outside talking about life, family, work, hunting, playing in band back in grade school, whatever topics. But dude was still there… hour went by, still there. It went from a concern, to probably nothing but we’ll keep an eye, to “this is just getting weird.” Why just standing there, doing nothing, for about an hour? Gave the police a call to have them drive by. I don’t know exactly how long it took them to show up, but I know I checked the clock and 15 minutes went by and it was some time after that before APD rolled onto the scene. Two cruisers showed up, they spoke with dude, eventually some people from a nearby house come out and there’s interactions with the police and discussions. Back and forth for a bit, APD seemed eventually satisfied and left. People from house brought a phone out to dude, and eventually he leaves in a car with someone (they had pulled up prior to APD arriving).

While the men were outside minding things, the women of the neighborhood were on the phone alerting all other neighbors. People were watching out their windows, noting things, taking descriptions, pictures, whatever. If something was going to happen, we were going to be prepared. 🙂 Plus, as everyone connected, it was evident that others had noticed dude too and had similar concerned feelings about the matter.

No idea what was going on, but it was still all very strange. We’re attempting to contact APD to find out the story.

Lessons learned:

• Don’t blow off gut feelings. If something feels wrong, act on it.
• You don’t know when ugly will strike, so always be prepared. I have all my everyday gear on me (including my flashlight), every day all the time. Wife needed me now, I was able to go and was ready (well, didn’t have my phone on me… still trying to work out a good “gotta keep it charged but need to keep it on me” strategy). I didn’t have to take time to get all my stuff together, I was ready and could act immediately.
• Ensure all your neighbors know each other and have each others contact information. You don’t have to be friends, but you are neighbors. Even if you might not like your neighbor, there may come a time where there’s a bigger evil that will require you to come together.
• If you’ve got a team, ensure you’ve got a plan. My wife and I? Team. Kids can be involved too. Then have plans, and ensure people know their parts; practice. Wife knows one of her primary roles is communication: she calls proper people, gathers information. I didn’t have to walk out the door and tell her to do any of this; she knows her role, I know mine. Kids even do to, for instance, they know that yeah sometimes in life you might be able to argue with Mom & Dad, but when something serious is going on you must obey… and they know that.
• Don’t count on a fast police response. I’m not surprised they didn’t come blaring in with sirens within 2 minutes, and I expect if they had to get two cruisers/officers and coordinate a bit that that would require a little more time too. I wish they were a little faster in their response but in the end it was acceptable response time. Still, it was quite a long time for the response…. you can only count on the police for so much, and your immediate safety isn’t necessarily part of that equation.
• If you believe in self-defense, your training shouldn’t be in only physical skills such as punching or shooting. You need to know street smarts, mental skills, and other such things. That will take you further.

I believe the world is a generally safe place. I believe the world is filled with good people. But evil can come in any form to any place at any time. Nothing is immune. If you don’t want evil to harm you and your loved ones, it’s good to be prepared to deal with it when (not if) it comes your way.