Sunday, February 5, 2012

Had an experience last night that was a bit disconcerting.  Exiting a restaurant, I stood beside my car, chatting with friends who mentioned it was odd that right beside us was an older Dodge minivan parked haphazardly in the street, passenger riding shotgun, yet no driver.  The car was away from the curb, lights on, motor running and in a red zone.

Hmmm….

Looking around, I caught sight of a man running towards the car from behind.  Strange thing was, he was running down the middle of the street, in a business area, cars around.  What struck me as odder still was the manner in which the man was holding his right arm and hand.  Being a runner myself, I noticed that he was familiar with running, as he was keeping a good pace.  Yet, though his left arm moved in fluid motion to his running, his right was held down at his side, hand clutching something with his palm facing his thigh. 

Each time his hand swung a tiny bit, light glinted off the object in his hand.  A moment later, I realized what the object was—a small caliber silver handgun.

Holy goodness, that’s not right!

There wasn’t time for my friends or me to react or move away.  Even if there had been, I doubt we would have, not wanting to draw attention to ourselves.

The man intent on what he was doing, paid my friends and me no heed, jumped in the driver’s seat of the haphazardly parked dodge minivan and sped away after tossing the gun on the consol between his woman passenger and himself.

Whew!

Until the car pulled away, I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath.  Doing so then, I exhaled and tried to come to terms with what I’d just seen.  That it had happened less than ten feet away from us.  In an area that wasn’t horrible.  Certainly not one I would’ve expected to see such activity. 

My mind raced.  My friends and I discussed why the man had been running with the gun.  Had he dropped it out the car window and gone back to claim it?  Had he seen it lying there and stopped to pick it up?  If the latter were true, why the heck would he do such a thing?  I mean really, not that I’m into guns, but even if I was, I wouldn’t want to pick up a discarded one to claim as my own. 

No way!  No how!

Imagine my friends and I will never know the story behind the man running down the middle of the street amongst traffic concealing a small caliber silver handgun.  Don’t image being enlightened would change anything.  In fact, perhaps it’s best we don’t know what provoked the man….