someone please call 911

As mentioned previously my neighborhood is full of colorful characters. My home is located in what has been referred to as the former borderline still present ghetto. I prefer to refer to it as a funky, underappreciated mecca for the quirky and creative. Just to clarify things, I am not a hipster (although, as a sidenote this is a fascinating culture and would love to be paid to complete an ethnographic study centered around them).

On a daily basis people have running monologues with themselves, scream cuss words at who I can only presume to be God as no one’s standing there, and one time a man rapped about hating white women while walking directly toward me and staring at me. I smiled at him. Pretty sure we’re friends. Sometimes homeless people sleep on the benches on our porch. And get angry if we ask them to leave.

The latest character living somewhere on the block is 911 Man. I had the pleasure of being awoken at 5:30 this morning not by a hot man wanting to ravish my body before the sun rose, not by the beautiful sound of a Spanish guitar, not even by the not so beautiful sound of my cell phone alarm but rather the hard core yelling of, “Someone call 911! Someone please call 911! I need someone to call 911!” To any normal person this would invoke some sense of fear or at least jumpstart some endorphins. Instead I lay in bed, without moving anywhere near my phone, and contemplated whether or not this man seriously needed 911’s assistance. He didn’t sound like he was dying. Rather he sounded more mentally disturbed and had decided to disturb the peace for everyone else. Still, I didn’t want the blood of someone else on my hands so I continued to debate whether or not it was worth it to get out of my nice warm bed into the not so nice, cold air (okay, so I’m still being wussy and dramatic about the weather). Even if I did call 911 I wasn’t sure exactly where to tell them to go to since our block has this interesting acoustic effect due to the buildings being built on the outside of the block with a bunch of courtyards in the middle. If someone’s talking inside these courtyards (or in this case yelling for 911) it’s difficult to tell which building’s courtyard it’s coming from. After I had this debate with myself (by which point someone seriously injured would have surely died) I heard someone talking to him. I figured that person would call 911 if it was necessary and fell back asleep. When I woke back up I remembered what happened and didn’t recall hearing any sirens so I figured I had been correct in my assessment of the situation.

My only piece of advice to 911 Man is that if he feels at all compelled to hold a repeat performance tonight I hope he at least incorporates some Wycleff elements.