I suddenly find myself pondering a move to someplace like Islamabad so I feel safer about my neighborhood.
A few weeks ago my street (which is a short one) was mentioned in the local newspaper’s police blotter for break-ins. Then, last weekend, our car was ransacked by, I assume, the local unsupervised miscreants who use our neighborhood as their own personal clubhouse.
Then, a couple nights ago, two of our neighbors (about four houses down) got into a disagreement about kids playing ball. Words were exchanged, they met in the street, and there was a fight that ended up with one of them dead. If I understand the story correctly, a father of three is now in jail facing murder charges.
I guess this proves the old adage, “Never bring your asshole parenting skills to a knife fight.”
Since then traffic on our cul-de-sac street has picked up considerably. There has been a marked increase in cars slowly driving down the street, turning around, then slowly driving out. I assume these are “scene of the crime” lookie-loos.
Suddenly our quiet little neighborhood isn’t so quiet any more.
Anyone know a good Pakistani travel agent?
Shouts from the Abyss 
Wow — that’s super-creepy.
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Truth be told: I had to write this post just cause I loved my headline so much. 🙂
The car break-ins are annoying, though. If I can get off my ass I’m planning to meet all my neighbors and see about starting a neighborhood watch. I think we need to go proactive on this.
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Ew. A guy went off his nut and killed his whole family one street over from a coworker. That whole day and the next, he said you couldn’t drive or find street parking. For one, news crews were there, so you got more interest from that but people kept walking in to look at the house.
It seems strange to me. I get people “come” to a news crew (figure they want to be on tv) but looking at a house where a whole family was slain is your evening’s entertainment? Weird.
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“Evening’s entertainment.” Somehow I think that exactly sums up what’s going on. It’s sick and weird, in my opinion.
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I’ve been going to stabbings like that for 26 years (professionally, not for entertainment value). I’ve never been to one where I found out what happened and said “oh yeah, I get that”.
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True. In this case the impetus seems to be that kids were bouncing a ball off a house. How in the name of hell that could escalate to a stabbing, I guess we’ll never know.
In a nice world, it would go something this:
“Hey, chap. Your kids are bouncing a ball off my house. I don’t like that.”
“No worries, mate. I’ll get them to stop!”
“Thanks! Have a good day.”
“You, too.”
Or, even better (but even more unimaginable):
“Hey, kids. I don’t like that.”
“Okay. We’ll stop.”
/sad
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Holy Crap!
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Yeah, that’s pretty much how I handled it. 🙂
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[…] I was going to entitle this post On The Street Where You Shiv but apparently I always used […]
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