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Needless Fear, The World We Live In [1]
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Date: 2023-05-25
A messy but open garage, late at night (mine, not my neighbor's)
The other night, I was rolling the trash bins out an hour or so after midnight; it’d been a long night with extra work. I noticed my neighbor’s garage door was wide open and the lights were on. I immediately texted him: “Hey, I just noticed your garage door was open.”
Now I know my neighbor, and we get along pretty well. We swap stories, and do favors for each other from time to time. On top of that, someone broke into his garage about a year ago and stole about $30K worth of tools, so I was worried that might’ve happened again. I did not want his garage door to spend the night open like that.
Therefore, I rang the doorbell. No answer
Given the theft a year ago, I decided to try and close it myself and exit through the side door into the breezeway between houses. I did so with no trouble. That’s not why I’m writing this story.
With everything that has been happening lately, even in my small town in Colorado, the fear I felt when walking into his garage uninvited at 2:00AM in my pajamas was overwhelming. Even as well as I know my neighbor, knowing with certainty that he’s not a nut, not a violent or easily triggered person, not a disturbed gun-loving RWNJ, I couldn’t dismiss the terror that somehow something might go terribly wrong. I got back into my house and just sat and shook for about 10 minutes.
That’s the world we now live in. If I want to help a neighbor—someone I know is a kind and nonviolent person, I still have a feeling of life and death fear. Too damn many people have been shot and killed just for being near someone’s house.
One person shot and killed is too damn many, and there have been thousands!
What actually happened is that I got a text message about 7:00 am thanking me for closing his garage door and asking if there’s anything he could do for me over the next few days.
But that 45 seconds or so of life-and-death terror had been real, and I’m still shaken.
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