Last week, I mentioned I’ve twice had a loaded gun pointed at me, and I described one of those times: a casual, dangerous dorm room prank. Now I’ll tell the other story.
But this isn’t only a story about guns; it’s also about fear. When fear distorts how we see things, we become dangerous—especially with a weapon in our hands.
When we were kids, on hot summer nights, my little sister and I would migrate downstairs where it was cooler, sleeping on the hide-a-bed with fans blasting us from all directions. The hide-a-bed was fun, like camping or building a fort. Pulling it out, we’d pretend we were orphans on a raft at sea, escaping our evil stepparents.
The “raft” was really located in the music room, which was what normal families would call the living room. Since Mom and our stepdad Lanny were musicians, the room was home to all manner of instruments: a piano and keyboard; drums; and guitars, banjos, and mandolins hanging on the walls.
Falling asleep on the hide-a-bed, I’d talk my sister to sleep and she’d rest secure with me as her protector. The noise of the fans drowned out any scary noises, and the breeze kept the sticky sweat at bay.
That’s where we awoke on this particular morning. Mom and Lanny were on vacation for the week, leaving us in the capable hands of Martha, our favorite babysitter. But Martha was gone this morning, too, teaching an aerobics class. We didn’t need her there all the time, since I was just old enough to be a babysitter myself.
I awoke groggily. The morning was beginning to brighten outside, and it was already hot. The gauzy material of my nightgown stuck lightly to my skin. It was my favorite nightgown, a translucent blue one I wore on hot nights. I didn’t care that you could sort of see through it—only me, Martha, and my sister would see it, and besides, it was too hot for thicker clothes.
I slipped out of bed and padded through the dining room to the bathroom. On my return, as I passed back through the dining room, I glanced out the kitchen window.
There was a man in the front yard.
He was dressed all in black, just standing in the middle of the yard in the gray light of early morning. Gasping, I dropped to a crouch behind the eating bar between the kitchen and dining room, out of sight from the man.
At least, I thought it was a man. I had left my glasses back at the hide-a-bed, and I was almost totally blind without them. Beyond the end of my nose, all I could see were blurry shapes and colors—enough to grope my way around the house, but not enough to make out any detail.
I needed to get to my sister and wake her up. If the man tried to come in, maybe we could flee out the back door. I didn’t know if he’d seen me, and to get back to the music room, I’d have to risk being seen again. The eating bar was hiding me from the big kitchen window that overlooked the front yard, but to reach my sister, I’d have to cross the doorway at one end of the bar. Even if I stayed low, I’d be visible from the yard as I crossed.
Blind and unable to check on the man’s position, I took a chance, scrambling across the doorway as quickly as I could.
I whispered urgently to my sister, crouching by her bedside, “Wake up! There’s a man in the front yard!”
“Hmm?” She opened her brown eyes wide.
She hadn’t inherited my bad eyesight. She sat up and peered out the music room window as I felt around for my glasses.
“There’s a police car out front!” she reported.
“There is?” Sure enough, with my glasses on I could see it, too. There were black-clad officers standing at the car, talking. The man in the yard must be a policeman too.
Well, this was a relief. It was the police, not a bogeyman. But why had they come?
Suddenly, an insistent banging sounded from the kitchen, muffled somewhat by the loud droning of the fans. The police were knocking loudly on the door. I realized belatedly that this was what had woken me up: they must have knocked on the door a few minutes ago.
The banging stopped.
More relaxed now, we got up to answer the door. But I didn’t want to go to the door in my translucent nightgown—I may not be self-conscious around my sister, but the police were a different story.
“Let’s go upstairs and get dressed, then come down,” I whispered, ushering her to the stairs. The stairs were just barely out of sight of the kitchen.
But we didn’t get far. Just as we were taking our first steps up the stairs, a loud sound came from the kitchen. It was more knocking, but this time even louder: Bam, bam, bam, bam, BAM! BAM! BAM!
There was a tremendous crash, followed immediately by a bellowing man’s voice: “POLICE! FREEZE! GET DOWN ON THE GROUND!”
To this day, my sister and I both vividly remember those words. They sounded like something right out of a movie.
Terrified, we stood just around the corner from the kitchen, still at the bottom of the stairs. My mind racing, I was rapidly piecing together what was happening. The police had kicked in the door; we could hear them moving toward us. They thought there was an intruder in the house, but the intruder was us. They must have seen me duck down behind the bar a few minutes ago and scramble across the doorway.
Seeing someone sneaking around inside the house and refusing to answer the door, they had seen a threat and decided to break in.
“Get down,” I murmured, afraid to do anything that might startle these men with guns. They’d said to get down, so we did. Trembling, we lowered ourselves to sit on the bottom steps, holding our breath as they approached.
And then it happened: an officer, dressed all in black and moving in a stalking crouch, rounded the corner in one quick military motion, swinging his gun around to face us, its hard, black barrel aimed directly at my face.
The instant we saw each other, the officer swore loudly and raised his gun to point at the ceiling, his expression the picture of dismay. He was blonde. He was probably younger than I am now. In that instant, he had narrowly avoided living one of his worst nightmares: accidentally shooting a child.
(I would find out later that a month previously, another Portland police officer had, in fact, accidentally shot and killed a child who was being held hostage. The entire police force was still reeling from the incident.)
The officer was even more shaken than we were. He and his comrades broke their crouches to stand up, curse, and reassess things, their mission having taken an unexpected turn. They all looked big and tough, striding around in their black boots, guns back in holsters now.
“Are you okay?” someone asked us.
“Yes,” we said, almost laughing from giddy relief.
“Is there anyone else here with you?” a man asked.
“No,” we said, confused. “Just us.”
“You’re sure? There’s no one here with you? There’s no one behind you, upstairs? Do you have any other brothers or sisters?” he asked us.
We told him no, but he kept asking.
After a few minutes of questioning, he explained. “We have to ask these questions, because if you have a friend here, or a brother or sister, there could be someone threatening them and telling you to tell us everything’s okay.”
We nodded understandingly, but tried to assure them that we were the only ones here. A few men and women went upstairs to explore the rest of the house and verify what we were saying.
Eventually, when they’d assured themselves it was all clear, we were allowed to go upstairs and get dressed. I felt relieved but confused. Why had the police come here in the first place?
When I came back downstairs, the young officer was pacing the kitchen, talking on our phone with someone higher-up, extremely agitated. He used a lot of “Yes sir” and “No sir.” I could hear the sharp voice on the other end lecturing him.
I felt bad. I tried to catch his attention and explain that it was all a big misunderstanding, but he brushed me aside, focused on his conversation.
Mom and Lanny were staying with some friends in Port Townsend for the week. They’d gone there to attend Fiddle Tunes, a weeklong camp and workshop for musicians. They traveled like this once or twice a year, leaving us with sitters; nothing had ever gone wrong until now.
Mom was awakened in the early morning by her friend Mary’s heart-stopping words: “Sue? The police are on the phone.”
Mom says the next 30 seconds were among the longest of her life. Steeling herself for the conversation as she got out of bed, she thought, “Whatever it is that I’m about to hear, it could change my entire life, forever.”
Why else would the police be calling, except to say that something had happened to us?
To her immeasurable relief, the police reported that we were fine. Nevertheless, it took her two or three days to recover from the shock.
The police said they’d been summoned to our house by the burglar alarm system. The system had the usual touchpad near the front door, which we used to set and unset the alarm when coming and going. There was also a silent alarm button, which you could press if you wanted to call the police without letting anyone know you were calling them. That button had been pressed.
Mom deduced that Martha, heading out for her aerobics class, must have accidentally hit the wrong button as she set the alarm.
Mom, still recovering from the conversation with the police, called Martha next. The first thing she said was, “Don’t worry; the girls are okay.” Comforting as they may be, these are not the words a babysitter wants to hear!
Martha was beside herself upon hearing what had happened. She apologized profusely and felt guilty for weeks afterwards.
But it turns out that all of them—the police, Mom, and Martha herself—were wrong. We discovered this a week or two after Mom and Lanny returned from their trip, when the police again appeared at the front door.
This time, Mom answered.
“Is everything okay?” they asked her.
“Yes,” she said, confused, “Why?”
They told her the silent alarm had been set off. Again.
That was when it dawned on Mom that it wasn’t Martha but the alarm system itself that was the culprit. Faulty wiring was causing the silent alarm to call the police at random.
Mom called ADT, our alarm company, and told them about the problem. They had someone “fix” it…but the police came again a few days later. The conversation repeated itself.
Several times, Mom called ADT and told them it wasn’t fixed. Several times, they “fixed” it, then the police showed up again. It was almost funny—the police would knock and Mom would explain the problem to them, laughing, rolling her eyes, and cursing ADT. (Lord knows what the neighbors thought.)
But after several times, it was no longer funny. After saying good-bye to the police one last time, she and Lanny ripped the touchpad from the wall and dismantled it themselves.
We laugh about this now. What else can we do? It’s a good story to tell. (Mom doesn’t laugh quite so hard as my sister and me.)
And I, for one, can say I learned some things from it all.
First, I won’t ever be signing up with ADT again. And if the police knock on your door, you really should just answer it, no matter what you’re wearing. And always wear your glasses to the bathroom.
Finally, I learned that sometimes, the things we do to make ourselves safer might actually put us in danger. Sometimes, in trying to protect ourselves from bad people, we might start to see danger where it doesn’t exist: we might see a burglar in the yard instead of a cop, or an intruder in the house instead of a frightened child.
Fear itself really can be dangerous, just as FDR said. And when guns are added to the equation, fear can even kill.
We need more than glasses to see things clearly.
Katie, I so enjoy reading your posts.