What I knew:
My next door neighbor is a druggie. By himself he’s pretty much harmless, rather pathetic in fact. It’s his friends that began to worry me. They come and go at all hours of the day and night, radios blaring no matter how wee the hour. They spill out of the house to sit on the porches, front and back, drinking and smoking and talking, talking, talking. They talk loudly with a vocabulary I do not repeat, usually in animated arguments. They have tempers which seem to flare a lot. Other neighbors have called the police on them several times when things got out of hand and fights occurred on the front lawn.
I don’t call the police. I smile and wave and pretend they’re all normal and I am in no way annoyed by them or a threat to them, just the old lady next door who doesn’t have anything worth stealing and who hasn’t done anything worth doing property damage to (or worse) as revenge.
What I didn’t know:
I had no idea why yesterday what seemed to be the entire local police and fire departments, every official vehicle within a five mile radius appeared on my street in complete ear-splitting siren wailing light flashing glory. They flooded in from both sides of the street, blocking traffic and trapping everyone in their houses and cars in their driveways. Their target was the house next door. Even though the inhabitants tumbled out like clown exiting a small car, there was nowhere for them to go.
I peered out my window absolutely shocked. There’d been police cars in ones and twos over the past few months, but never anything like this.
Everyone from the house was arrested. The house was searched. Things were found and confiscated, containers and apparatus I couldn’t identify were all carefully removed.
Massive coronary.
When I’d let my imagination roll,
I had suspected maybe I was living next to a suburban crack house.
I had no idea it was really a meth lab.
Stunned, just stunned.
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