why shoot the moon when you can shoot your family? (a two part flashback in one part)

so, this was another day we don’t have an “exact” flashback…

…but the lack of this one i know is due to me being in colorado on business exactly sixteen years ago today.

meanwhile, one of my archive discs has the bits not in chronological order, but in alphabetical – not by title of bit, but by the somewhat descriptive title i gave it when i rescued it from google cache. this appears to be a two part thing, which is how it will be in the side menu archives, but to give some closure i put both bits here. doubling up on friday? don’t mind if i do!

take me away (the interlude)
by sean ~ April 19th, 2006. Filed under: Uncategorized.

okay, so on yesterday’s entry there was an unscheduled half time where by somebody almost got arrested and / or shot in my front yard…

…do i know how to party or what?

so, last night at 10:30, i’m sitting in the office here at casa de sean, minding my own business, and doing a whore entry. this is NOT uncommon. (it was for a while, back in the sad days where the entries were becoming weekly, but we fixed that). i see this mini truck creep slowly up to my house. this does not phase me. why?

we got a new couch recently.

yes, as i believe i mentioned, our small den combined with alex’s allergy to doggy dander (and therefore aversion to the upholstery that can nurture it) made us HAVE to get a leather sectional i’d always wanted. ain’t that a damn shame? but when we threw out the old love seat and coffee table, the city (what a shock) is taking it’s damn sweet time coming to get it. we’re now in week TWO since i hauled it up (three starts on saturday) and so i figured it was people furniture shopping in front of my house…

…not uncommon. what happened next, however, was.

so, the truck sits in my driveway, lights on, for about three seconds, then slowly backs back out. i figure this could either be couch or car shoppers, since the malibu ain’t running (but damn it, WILL run again – i swear it) and last time i had a dead vehicle nationals appeared out of nowhere with cash – but even they kept it to a reasonable hour.

after the truck backed out, it turned back towards the little street that T’s into my street, pulls just around the corner (right under the street light) and kills the engine and lights. i kill the monitor on the computer so the office window goes dark.

the waiting game ensues.

after about two minutes,i walk around through the den, the dining room, and towards the door to my garage – when i happen to look down, i notice i have a missed call – something i didn’t have at 10:00 when i took a shower. i check it and it says “arturo” (for those who know my family, they’re laughing).

now realizing that the truck that looked quite similar to my uncle’s in my driveway probably WAS my uncle’s in my driveway, i walk outside, and the truck is no longer at the corner. i look over and see a tall guy standing in the shadows of the street lamp, who then starts to walk down the road away from my house – i look down and see he is walking to the same truck now pulled down the street…and it looks like he has a gun.

this makes this uncool for three reasons:

1. my uncle has a limp and walks with a cane, and this guy doesn’t.
2. my uncle’s “amigo” is not tall.
3. neither of them, to my knowledge, own a gun.

i come back in the house ’cause at this point i figure the police probably need to get involved. i grab my phone, and walk back outside to see what i can see (it should be noted at this point that during this entire incident i have neither my contacts nor my glasses on, so “what i can see” is a bit limited.). i see the tall guy from under the street light and what looks to be a short woman disappear around the back of my neighbor’s house. i walk around the street corner, and my neighbors (husband and wife) pop around the corner when they see it’s me and ask if i saw the “strange vehicle”. i tell them my hypothesis that it was my uncle and show them the missed call, adding that the “strange vehicle” looked just like his truck.

and we laugh.

then they pull out the cordless phone, call the cops, and tell them never mind – they had already called the cops on what i THINK was my uncle.

with the law now out of the picture, we all retire to our separate dwellings and crash – for my neighborhood, this is high drama. that’s why i like my neighborhood…

and then, the bit from the following day, which given the original publishing date of “4/20” was surprisingly not about weed:

04/20/2006: “again??? (the interlude to the interlude)”

okay, so last night while working on the entry about the interruption during working on the entry before i got interrupted…

…follow that?

(i promise – this will be the end on this one)

this time it was just by my phone ringing – and it was uncle arturo.

nice to hear another perspective on the other night’s events.

so, it turns out that around a month ago (nice reaction time, huh?) my uncle got one of those calls we’ve all had before – the one where we have a five minute voicemail of ambient noise, and we wonder “what the fuck???”. for those of us who are part of the mobile phone generation, it’s no big deal – for my seventy year old uncle, it’s a conspiracy in the making…

…i think they call this a “generation gap”.

he swears he heard two guys and a girl in what sounded like a hotel…

(for the record, arturo, i only to threesomes with two girls – so that should have been a tip off…not that you know me like that. which is probably a good thing. let’s move on…)

anyway, it was apparently five minutes of random, drunken, (going off the time frame) spring break merriment, ending with one of the guys saying, “sean, dude, your phones been on a while…” and the other guy yelling across the room to hang it up. the end of the call.

flash forward a month.

i was curious if he wanted to do something for easter so i called him on friday to see what was up and had to leave a message, but left a generic one and didn’t mention easter so if he checked it AFTER the holiday he wouldn’t feel too guilty.

but he thought i was in trouble – and tied said trouble to the ambient call the month prior. again, nice reaction time. he’s a bit of a night owl, and recently retired (i didn’t know about that last part) so showing up at my house at 10:30 on a school night was no big deal to him.

so the hour makes sense.

he pulled in, saw the house was mainly dark, and pulled back out of the driveway so his lights wouldn’t wake me – he wanted to call to see if i was up, though, and does not believe in using a mobile phone while driving.

(in case you ever wondered if anyone actually listened to that safety tip, now you know…)

so, he pulled over under the street light (by my neighbors) and turned off the truck, and pulled out his phone. he has an older one, and keeps it off so he doesn’t use minutes, and it took a minute or two to fire up. once it did, he realized he couldn’t really see due to the shadow ’cause he had pulled up to far – so rather than back up a yard or so, he just pulled up to the end of the street where there’s a lot more light and called me.

so now the parking and moving makes sense.

after he gets my voicemail he turns to david to discuss – do we go back? call again? perhaps leave a note on his…wait…who’s that big redneck looking guy walking up behind us? and what’s that in his hand (by the way – NOT a gun, but rather a small, odd shaped, cordless phone that in the dark looked to my no contacts and glasses self like a weapon – and fooled my uncle, too) – so he took off.

and i think that brings us up to speed.

tomorrow, i promise, the subject will be changed.

and thus we have closure!

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