Scary thoughts on Halloween
I have a few scary things to report for Halloween. The first thing is the earthquake last night. The second thing is the scary man incident this morning. First the earthquake. Last night Tim and Kerrie and their two kids came over to my apartment to carve pumpkins with Greg and me. If you must know, Greg and my pumpkin ended up being carved with “SKIRKELL” which is our humorous new last name. We had just finished and were having some Thai take out when the ground started to shake.
When I first felt it, I thought, “that is one huge train” because we live right by the train tracks. But I quickly realized that it was no train at all but actually an earthquake. We all headed for the doorframe and met all our neighbors out there doing the same thing. When the shaking stopped I checked the Internet to see how big and near it was and it was actually pretty close with a magnitude of 5.6. I think that was the largest earthquake in the area since 1989. But, fortunately, it wasn’t big enough to do any real damage to my apartment. Only one picture frame fell down. However, my neighbors across the way now have a few crooked walls and have to have them reinforced.
OK, now for the scary man incident. This morning, I was biking to practice and just as I passed the high school and man stepped into the bike lane a little ways in front of me and started walking towards me. I veered into the street to avoid him but he mirrored my movements and was still in front of me. So I yelled, “What are you doing?” at him and he kind of paused and I biked around him and just kept going. I was scared but didn’t think much of it. Even though I thought that he might have been trying to make a grab for me, I also thought that he might have just been trying to cross the street with strange coincidental timing or possibly doing that thing where you are trying to avoid someone in a hallway or doorframe and do a little mirror dance.
However, after morning practice, I was telling this story to Greg because I was still a little freaked out by it. He told me about a story he had read online just this morning. Apparently, yesterday a girl was assaulted and then abducted while walking home from another local high school, driven to Sunnyvale, and then sexually assaulted. Thankfully, she escaped but her description of her assaulter matched the man who seemed to be trying to block me and possibly grab me this morning.
I called the police tip line from the story and left a message but then I told Tim and he said that I should actually report it and talk to a person. So I did but it was really frustrating because all that the police guy basically said was that it was too late and that I should have called them from my cell phone as soon as it happened. Grr, how was I to know it was important? I don’t read the paper looking for perverts before I head out in the morning for practice. Do people usually call the police every time some grungy looking guy gets in their way?
Even though I wasn’t too upset about it at first, reading the story made me pretty scared in a “that could have been really bad” kind of way. So I decided that I wanted some Mace or pepper spray for my key chain. I went to Big 5 and was surprised that it was only $10 and the one that I got has pepper spray, military tear gas, and UV dye in it. I don’t think that I am the type of person who is a victim but it’s definitely better to be safe than sorry.