News on the Street

We arrived home from Delaware tired and happy. After a little something for supper, we went to bed about our usual time, 10:30. I slept until almost two before waking although sometime during the night I had heard a siren, not an unusual occurrence in Philadelphia. 

The next morning we are sitting in front of the tv with our coffees and tea and the local news comes on and there has been a shooting, three people injured and sent to the hospital, cops on the scene, and here is the street. Wait. What? That wall looks familiar. “Mama”, says Meredith, “that’s right outside your window.” We look and can’t see the wall for their tree but when we go outside and around the corner, there it is. The wall we have just seen on the tv right across the street from the back of their house. A shooting, and we had all slept through it.

The next night, we come home from touring Independence Hall and eating at the City Tavern, and are doing ordinary stuff. Meredith has heading to the basement with laundry. I am cutting a piece of cake. The doorbell rings, David answers it and comes back into the living room followed by three large men, detectives investigating the shooting. 

Bless them, they were right out of central casting. We had Kojak, tall, bald, and the obvious leader; the intellectual, black messy hair, black rimmed eye glasses and knows all about the internet and navigating the video footage; and the young one, who probably hasn’t been a detective long. And there they stood in the middle of the living room. 

David accessed the footage from the video cam for them and they loved it. They got lots of information and were pleased with the visit. Meredith was a little startled when she came up from the basement to see them standing in her living room but again, David introduced them and they were very polite and efficient and grateful for being let in and shown the footage.

It was definitely a lesson in white privilege as we were not scared or worried and they were surprised (as they said several times) to find the necessary electronic equipment in this lovely little apartment. I asked David if they had shown him ID and he said, yes, their shields were out when he opened the door. 

I do enjoy visiting my family and I have to say, there is never a dull moment, and sometimes you are almost on the morning news and feel like you are in the middle of a tv show.