Thursday mornings me and Brandon have a set at the International House of Prayer with our beloved friends. Sadly, this set is at 6am, which means we get there at 5:30, which also means we leave our house at 5:15. Yes. 5:15, and no, we are not morning people. But we love doing it, and we love Amy Lingamfelter, who roped us all in.
Thus, this past rainy Thursday morning me and Brando roll outta bed exhausted at 5am allowing ourselves a whole 10 minutes of getting ready time. When we are finally ready, clothes on, and herbal tea in hand, I open the door. Only to be welcomed into the day by a woman screaming profanities and a police cars flashing lights. Surprising, to say the least.
At this point you may need some back story, to help understand what happens next. Me and Brandon live in a condo in Leawood Kansas. This condo is so graciously rented to us by my parents, without whom we could never afford to live in such a "nice" area.
Before Brandon lived there with me, a certain beautiful Miss TLAr (known to some as Tiffany Larson) was my roommate. Now for this story lets go back to the months of me and Brandon's engagement. One late late weeknight, as Tiffany lay sleeping, I sat on the couch peacefully reading, only to be interrupted by abrupt harsh knocking on the door. Startled I considered not even answering the door. But decided to rise and look through the peep hole, only to see an officer of the law standing there. I opened the door and invited her in. "Is that your car Miss?" she asked pointing to TLars black Honda parked directly in front of our condo. "No, its my roommates, but shes sleeping. You want me to wake her?" "Yes" the officer replied. After I awoke Tiff, the officer preceded to tell us that our next door neighbors had accused us of hitting their car with our car door, and leaving several scratches. She also told us that they said we parked so horribly they could not get in, and that we would park so close that we would trap them in their car and then laugh when they couldn't get out. Yes, trap them in their car and then laugh. She also complimented our condo quite a few time and then took Tiffany's info down and delivered to us a stern rebuke on how doing those types of things where
very immature, and we really needed to stop. Then she was on her way. After she left we had a small moment of panic, that maybe she wasn't a real cop at all, and was trying to steal our information (identity theft being one of the number one crimes in KC you know). That situation left us quite puzzled, until the other mundane occurrences of life overtook us, and this odd situation was left to hide in the file of "odd stories you randomly tell" in the back of our minds somewhere.
Back story number two...Me and Brandon are now married. Brandon sits with a group of friends amidst the smoke of a local awful house, oops, I mean waffle house. He sees he has a message on his phone. Weird he thinks, I don't know that number. The weird number has left a voice mail. "Brandon this is Detective so and so from the Leawood police. Your name has come up in a case. Im going to need to set up a metting with you. Please call me back asap. So, in due time Brandon goes to this meeting, where the detective asks him, "So, whats your problem with your neighbors? You just don't get along?" "They say they saw you under there car, then there wher nails and screws in all of them, it cost them over 500 bucks to replace. They think its because they are black. What do you have to say." Yes folks. That's right. The neighbors who have never met or talked to my husband, who have no knowledge of his summers spent in Africa caring for "black" orphans, or his beautiful "black" niece whom he would give his left arm for, are accusing him of being a racist. Brandon pleads his case. He tells the officer about hows he's in bible school, loves black people, and has never committed a crime (besides for driving with out a seat belt). The detective asks if there was anyway Brandon would be willing to take a lie detector test. "Yes, of course!" Brandon replies trying to hide the excitement surging through him at the thought of taking
a real lie detector test! But, alas, nothing every comes from this either and Brandon does not take his beloved lie detector test.
All this brings us back to this past rainy early Thursday morning. Me and Brandon, leaving, stumble into what looks like a domestic dispute of some sort. I see a woman waving her arms about in front of a police man. I did not recognize this woman was my neighbor, being I had only seen her three or four times in the year I lived at the condo. Not knowing what to do I got into my car acting as if all this sort of stuff was perfectly normal, and I would just be on my way.
That is until a police officer knocked on my car window and asked me
what was happening.
What was happening? I had just rolled out of bed,
that was what was happening. Long story short, we where asked to go back into our house after this irate woman had chosen a few choice words to describe Brandon and demanded that he, the racist Mother F***** be thrown in jail
today. Eventually the police came in, after calling for back up, to calm the furious woman. Me and Brandon tried to give him the back story I just gave you. The policeman took all our info for the report he was making. We explained to him we had never met our neighbors and had no hard feelings against them (at least up to that point...haha). The policeman searched Brandon's back pack he had brought to the car. Investigating it for screws and/or nails, and instead finding earplugs and books. Before leaving he advised us to steer clear of the neighbors completely. He gave us this advice in response to the neighbors telling him that we come and go anytime they come or go. Always at the door when they are. Odd, I thought since I had seen them less than a handful of times in over a year. He told us we would be getting a call from a detective at some point.
As we left I saw them both, husband and wife staring down at me with intimidating scowl, through their window which overlooks our parking spot.
That morning when I got to work I told my boss the whole crazy story. Oddly enough she had just listened to a radio show called
This American Life on NPR that had told a similar story. With sympathy, she found the story on her ipod and encouraged me to listen to the strange story of a girl who's elderly neighbor was convinced she was a drug dealer and tormented her day and night. So that morning while George napped, I sat knitting, and was strangely comforted by this girl from New York's queerly farmiliar story.
