So maybe we should think more seriously about moving...

Last night we didn't get much sleep. Yes, this is probably because my schedule is still a little funky from the Japan jetlag (although Lucy started sleeping through the night again on Friday - just 3 days after returning - what an angel!). But it is also because there was some crazy domestic disturbance going on right outside our window early this morning at 3:30 AM! I couldn't get to sleep and was just lying in bed, finally on my way to dreamland and then I hear all this shouting. At first, I thought all the noise was some punk kids making a ruckus. But when I peeked out of the blinds of my bedroom window, which overlooks the street, it was apparent that much more was going on.

There were four people, two girls and two boys. One boy was swearing his head off and wanting to get at the other boy while the girls were trying to hold the boy back and keep them apart. It seemed like a pretty heated squabble at first but it quickly escalated. I heard an authoritative voice from under me, which ended up being my next door neighbor, yelling at the kids from his front door and telling them to cut it out or he was going to call the cops. It was difficult to see from my window since it was dark out and I had a tree obstructing my view but the boy was obviously not calming down, but getting more aggressive. The girl frantically starts screaming in a panic, "Call the police! Call the police!", at which point, my neighbor goes out in the street in his underwear, cell phone in hand giving a play by play to the 911 operator of what is happening while simultaneously trying to break up the fight. The one boy is swinging - not sure if he ever landed a shot on the other boy who is evading but making no effort to run away - and the girl is trying to intervene when the boy turns on her.

At this point, the boy and girl disappeared behind my tree but I'm pretty sure that he lands a shot on her because I'm hearing my next door neighbor telling the operator that she was hit and the girl doesn't emerge from the behind the tree until a significant time later. Meanwhile, my neighbor hands his phone to his wife who has come out onto the street, and gets in between it all and the kid starts swinging at him. Big mistake! My neighbor (who is a pretty big guy, probably in his 30's) pins him down to the asphalt in a second, with the kids face in the ground, my neighbor's girth on his head (they were in opposite directions) yelling, "You are under citizen's arrest!" over and over again. Despite the size difference of the two, I was still pretty worried about my neighbor as he had previously had leg surgery a couple of months back and you just never know if these kids are drunk, on drugs, or have knives or guns or you know, have trained in MMA or something. Within minutes, 5-6 police cars were there, catching the other boy who had fled, who finally figured out too late that there was no good reason for him to be there, and arresting the other boy who was pinned. By this time, Brandon and I are out on the street, wanting to make sure our neighbor was okay and to be witnesses to make sure he doesn't get into any sort of trouble for defending himself.

The crazy thing about the whole scenario was that this girl, who had just been hit, was screaming at my neighbor to let the boy go. The other woman, who we found out later was her mother, was pleading that the boy not get arrested because his father had died a month ago. Sad, but like that is any justification for him to hit a girl and start swinging at a complete stranger. It ended up that the boy who was arrested had found his girlfriend with the other guy. And when the cops started questioning the mother and daughter, they both completely denied that he had hit her! The cops asked my neighbor, his wife, and me and Brandon, back into our homes and that if they needed any more information, they would get it from us later. I'm trusting that they know how to do their jobs and will get the whole story. If not, they'll always have the 911 tapes with the play-by-play.

I was just really glad that my neighbor (who confirmed he had some training and based on his take-down, I believe it) and his wife (who also happens to be a 911 operator) were there on top of things (literally). I was scared just thinking about Brandon trying to break things up if our neighbor wasn't there but you can't let a guy just beat on a girl like that. So this wasn't exactly CSI/Law & Order type drama, but even fists can be pretty scary. We don't even know our neighbors names although they've always been friendly if we see them outside their house. They even watered some of our garden without our asking since the plants were dying while we were in Japan. It's nice to know that we have good people living next door who are willing to lend a hand when not asked or when things get ugly. Brandon suggested that we 1) find out what their names are, 2) invite them over to dinner to get to know them a little better, and 3) start thinking a lot more seriously about moving to a different neighborhood...