adrenaline rush

Only twice in recent memory has my heart raced so fast I thought it was unhealthy. This past week was one such occasion. At around 3am one night my wife sits up with her back absolutely straight and says "What's that?" loudly. That obviously woke me up and I start to think what she could have possibly heard. Was there a fire she smelled? Was one of the kids coming home in the middle of the night hurt? Was it her woman's intuition kicking in or just a bad dream? It turned out to be a mild anxiety attack, but my heart had already picked up the pace as if I was running for my life as the adrenaline rushed through my heart. That is such a crazy feeling.

The last time my heart saw massive amounts of adrenaline, we lived in San Antonio. At about the same time in the middle of the night, I saw lights in the living room being turned on and off. Our master bedroom was on the first floor and it was right next to the pool on the outside and the living room on the inside. At first I thought it was a bit odd as the kids typically turn them on to get something to eat but don't turn them on and off. I initially woke up as I thought I heard someone walk by our window and brush up against the bushes and make some noise. So when the lights kept being switched on and off, I immediately thought a thief had broke into our house. Off to the races went my heart beating much faster than normal. I kept wondering whether I should get up and check on it or not. One of my middle son's friends was beat up by a local gang down the road from our house, so I also knew there were bad elements around that I did not want to see. If only I had a metal baseball bat under our bed I would feel better about going to see who was testing our lights. By the time my heart calmed down the phone rang. Now that was odd turn of events. I was so happy as I hoped that would scare away the burglar. Sure enough the lights stopped flashing. After waiting a couple more minutes I went out to see what was going on. As I entered the living room I saw police car lights flashing in front of our house. Now I was saved as the cop must have caught the intruder who was wasting my electricity! He came to the front door and rang the doorbell. I look out and I see one of my sons in the back seat of the car with handcuffs on. I was so confused my head was spinning. Such harsh treatment for switching the lights on and off! Turns out the story was just beginning to get complex. I asked the policeman if he saw anyone turning lights on and off in our house. He said he did not. I asked him how long he had been there and he said a few minutes. That was odd. He then said he was writing my son up with a warning for being out after the 11pm curfew, which existed for everyone under 18 in San Antonio. They do this since there is so much gang activity at night that they don't want good kids getting involved I suppose. He goes and gets my son and after unlocking the handcuffs brings him to the front door. As I close the door I learn even more facts.

Sometimes life is much stranger than fiction as I have learned from our two years in San Antonio. I was very angry at my son but glad he was safe. I asked him if he saw the lights being turned on and off and he said the policeman handcuffed him to the car so he did not run away. He then went around the back of the house and somehow entered the back door. For 30 minutes he was going through our house! He told our son that he was checking for a photo of him to prove this was his house. I had read many stories in the San Antonio newspaper of dirty policeman, because of all of the drugs and gangs. I guess I had just met one. He had no right to come into our house, but he had denied being in it to my face. Just one of many extremely odd things that happened to use when we lived there.

Of course the real story as to why my son was out that time of the night was only amusing looking back at it. A mutual "friend" of two of my sons was, as I would find out later a drug dealer and generally a very weird person. He had come by to get my son since he knew he played the guitar. He knew where a bunch of skateboarders hung out at night and wanted to have a rock concert for them. He broke into an abandoned grocery store, let all of the skateboarders in so they could skate around on the floor while being entertained by music. The was all premeditated as for weeks he had smuggled in sound equipment. My son was like the rock star, showing up for the concert with everything ready to go. The problem was they turned the amps up so loud that a policeman getting gas at a nearby gas station heard the noise and investigated. All of the skateboarders fled by running into a nearby field. My son and another one jumped into the car belonging to the bad "friend" and turned on the car and tried to escape. By then a bunch of cops were there and they could not escape the parking lot, so they got caught. This bad "friend" showed up at our house a couple of nights later and I asked him about what happened and banned him from our house in the future. He said he crawled up into the air vents and stayed there until the next morning. The police confiscated his car and all of his sound equipment. I did not feel sorry for him in any way. That was not the last we heard of this bad "friend" as my oldest son attached himself to him for some strange reason, but that story will have to wait for another day.