Did I ever tell y’all about that time I witnessed a crime, but I was such a bad witness that not only did I fail to contribute to solving the case, but the cops asked my neighbors if I was mentally disabled?
In a way, I was. This happened in the late 1990s in Tampa when I was the frazzled, sleep-deprived mother of a newborn. We lived in a tiny bungalow with a huge front porch near the Hillsborough River.
I spent many sleepless hours on that porch. Once at about 3 AM, I wandered out looking for my glasses (which had been missing for a couple of days). A gigantic raccoon was on the porch toying with the cat’s water dish, and I grabbed a broom and chased it off.
A few minutes later from the porch swing, I saw a car pull up at a house next door to the house directly across the street. I knew all the neighbors and figured it was that family’s teens.
I’m extremely near-sighted, so I couldn’t really see anyone without my glasses. Didn’t think I needed to until a few minutes later, when I heard a loud ruckus and saw people pile into the car at the curb and drive away too fast for a sleepy neighborhood, tires squealing.
Moments later, several cop cars converged on the house across the street. I should have gone inside, but I kept watching from the porch swing as best I could with faulty eyesight. Eventually I saw two cops coming up my walkway.
At the same time, I saw a raccoon scuttling across the porch to the cat’s water dish again, so I reemployed the broom and remarked to the approaching cops, exasperated, “These damn raccoons won’t stay off my porch!”
A cop replied, “Ma’am, that’s a cat.”
I bent over to take a closer look at the animal and exclaimed, “Oh my God, that’s MY cat! Cosmo, I’m so sorry!” and I let him in the house.
The cops questioned me about what I’d seen, which turned out to be an attempted home invasion where people kicked in a door. I couldn’t tell them anything except I saw a car. White maybe? Definitely not black.
I had zero useful information on the occupants. It was dark, I did not have my specs, and their backs were to me. I had no idea what gender or race or whatever. The cops soon grew impatient and left, then slandered me to the neighbors.
My husband slept through all of this, and when I told him about it the next morning, he said fuck the budget — go put new glasses on the credit card. Jesus. I don’t think the missing pair ever turned up.
All this to say:
Yeah, pretty much. Open thread!
Adam Lang
“Ma’am, that’s a cat.”
Okay, not gonna lie, that had me giggling.
Alison Rose
From downstairs: Here’s Biden addressing the report, and he sure as heck doesn’t sound feeble or whatever to me.
Also, LOL forever BC :)
SiubhanDuinne
That’s a great story, BC, but I’m missing the significance of the Chatham Harrison tweet about POTUS.
But that story is hilarious.
HumboldtBlue
I think we should all dance. Just rock, y’all, just rock.
Ohio Mom
Did you ever find out what happened in that house across the street?
prostratedragon
Right up there with, “This is an Arby’s, Ma’am.”😆😆
HumboldtBlue
Biden to speak on the special counsel report in a few minutes.
Chetan Murthy
@HumboldtBlue: BTW, I’ve noticed you posting these humorous or otherwise entertaining clips from time-to-time, and can I just say, I appreciate them!
Chetan Murthy
@SiubhanDuinne: I think it’s a response to the special prosecutor Hur’s statement that Biden was forgetful (as in “I don’t recall”) during his interview. B/c yanno, he’s olllllld (gotta be!) rather than he’s just doing what we all should do when interviewed by the po-po.
HumboldtBlue
@Chetan Murthy:
Rock on!
Biden taking questions.
He just slapped Peter Doocy down.
Frankensteinbeck
Everyone has heard Biden is Old. The campaign trail will force people to actually hear him speak, and they’ll go “Wait, he sounds fine to me, nevermind!” It’s already starting. Reports like this are spitting in the wind. Biden wasn’t charged, Trump was. That’s all anyone will remember in a month.
cmorenc
When i was about 14yo, one night about midnight i suddenly encountered an armed burglar inside our house at a range of only a dozen feet – he had come in via an unlocked bathroom window. I only realized he wasn’t my dad roaming downstairs for a midnight snack as the guy turned toward me and I could see his face was not my dad’s and…he has a handgun in his hand, which he began to turn toward my direction.
Fortunately he was as unexpectedly surprised by me as i was him, which gave me just the instant I needed to FLY up the (temporarily shielding) stairs 3x at a time and pop into my parents’ bedroom yelling “armed burglar! Get the GUN!” (double-barrel .12ga shotgun under parent’s bed). The burglar decided to flee out the front door rather than chase upstairs after me.
Punch line is: about a week later, police asked me to come to the station to i.d. a suspect allegedly involved in multiple recent burglaries – even though it was a one-man lineup, just the suspect- I could not definitely id him! He looked significantly different from what i remembered that night – but the suspect’s fingerprints were an exact match for the prints he had left on our bathroom window sill. So much for the accuracy of my eyewitness I.D. under the stress of the event.
zhena gogolia
@Alison Rose: And he says the interviews started the day after Hamas attacked. He might have been a bit distracted.
hells littlest angel
Joe Biden (to Little Peter Doocy): My memory is so bad I let you speak.
prostratedragon
@Frankensteinbeck: Sounds with it to me. And some of those reporters are real assholes.
zhena gogolia
I love Betty’s story. I went out one twilight to call in my tuxedo cat Spanky for the night. I found him and was about to pick him up and cuddle him when I realized he was a skunk.
Alison Rose
@zhena gogolia: Just a smidge!
prostratedragon
@hells littlest angel: What I’m talking about.
zhena gogolia
@Frankensteinbeck: THANK YOU
I said something similar in a thread earlier this afternoon, but I’m glad to hear it affirmed.
zhena gogolia
@hells littlest angel: HAHAHA He really said that?
hells littlest angel
@zhena gogolia: Yep. And then he went on to someone else.
Baud
@hells littlest angel:
👍
Elizabelle
You were brooming your own cat. LOL.
The things cops must see and hear. In some cases, because their very presence just unnerves or scares people.
Baud
Maybe we should consider rebooting the “Chill the fuck out, I’ve got this” posters from 2008.
geg6
@zhena gogolia:
It was awesome. Old and out of it, my ass.
Frankensteinbeck
Wow. I have never heard the press being such assholes asking questions, and that’s a bar you have to hurdle “Why does everyone hate you?” in Hillary’s first town hall to clear. They managed with “So now that it’s proven you’re old and senile, are you going to quit the race?” It doesn’t change anything about the importance of this event, but my god, these people so desperately want Biden to not run.
I noticed in his commentary about Israel how incredibly carefully he chose his words, which politically he has to, but I support his position. Of course he supports Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas, but Israel has gone too far and now Biden is focused on humanitarian help and ceasefires to help the innocent Gaza civilians.
David 🏈 Mahomes! 🏈 Koch
“Ma’am, that’s a cat.”
——————————–
Nominated
Elizabelle
Listening to a Red, Wine & Blue training zoom.
One of their big points is DO NOT repeat disinformation at school board meetings, even to point out how stupid it is. Just refute it.
Thinking about how our MSM is nothing but a megaphone for the worst among us. In search of controversy, eyeballs, and profits.
Repetition, repetition, repetition of the disinformation. Because it’s “news.”
mrmoshpotato
I see (haha) that I’m not the only one blind as a bat without my glasses.
David 🏈 Mahomes! 🏈 Koch
@zhena gogolia:
On a dark moonless night, my tuxedo cat got into a wresting match in the drive way with my next door neighbor’s cat who is black. I ran outside and grabbed him and he freaked out as I did everything I could to subdue him to get him inside. Turns out I grabbed the wrong cat. No wonder he was so upset.
persistentillusion
@Alison Rose: One night, long ago, I returned home from a night out and saw my white teacup poodle in the back yard. Turned out to be an opossum. Poodle never thought that story was funny.
ETA, should have been a response to ZG
Baud
@Elizabelle:
Yes, libs do that a lot.
Ivan X
I feel crazy because I’m a big Biden fan and I think his brain is completely fine (in fact, excellent) but at the same time when he speaks he sounds to me like he’s 150. He does, in fact, present as feeble, to me. I don’t think he is, but I feel like I’m in the bizarro universe when people are like “ah it’s just the media and Republicans.” I really don’t think it is only that. He just seems old, and in this society have a major cultural bias against oldness (which I’m the first to admit I feel too, as much as I wish I didn’t). Yes, the media exploits it in bad faith, but then again, that’s what they do, especially to Democrats.
So, I worry about how Biden appears, from a voter perspective. But I don’t worry about him. (And, I’d be a lot more worried about the votes if Trump weren’t his opponent — no one is gonna vote for Trump because they think his brain is safer for the country than Biden, if they weren’t gonna vote for Trump already.)
Also, fuck this report. It reeks to holy hell of bad faith. There would have been plenty of other ways to say the same thing, if it’s even a fair observation or conclusion, in a less politically loaded way. Fortunately, it’s February, and it will be long forgotten by election time.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ivan X:
Depends. He sounded no worse than an exasperated daddy dealing with idiot children through most of this, but when he got to talking about Israel, he was being so slow and careful with his phrasing that yeah, out of context he sounded old.
Baud
@Ivan X:
You’re right that appearance could matter to some people. But we just have to push past that. Like you said, what matters is his capacity to perform, and don’t have any doubts about that.
karen gail
I have been nearly “blind” for most of my life, as a teenager my brothers thought it was great fun to move my glasses around; I have always been very careful about where I put them and keep a backup pair of glasses in top dresser drawer.
I have been found on my hands and knees patting the floor gently when managed to lose track of my glasses.
wjca
I can see OK without my glasses. Of course, everything beyond arms length is blurry (20/400 plus astigmatism), but then it’s been that way all my life. Including in school — I was in high school when my parents realized that I couldn’t see the blackboard in class. And never had been able to.
Still mostly don’t bother with glasses, except when driving. Maybe I just like the world with soft, fuzzy edges. And there’s something amusing about the full moon being a total blur, but the crescent moons being only somewhat blurry . . . all 7 of them. Imaging the cosmology if everyone saw like that!
Eyeroller
@Ivan X: As we age our vocal cords thin and stiffen. That isn’t something we can control and it’s not indicative of mental failure. And in Biden’s case it would not be at all surprising that it becomes harder to manage a stutter as you age, especially with the changes to the vocal cords and larynx I just mentioned.
mrmoshpotato
@HumboldtBlue: He just slapped Peter Doocy?
How we wish!
karen gail
@wjca: I don’t mind the fuzzy edges, but the lack of depth perception adds a danger factor to my life. My eyes are about the same as yours, funny my father and grandfather and I all had the same eye doctor at one time. He said it had to be genic since we all had exactly the same eye problems.
SiubhanDuinne
@Chetan Murthy:
Thanks. I guess once I catch up on the news I’ll understand. Have had four lengthy, almost back-to-back Zoom sessions today, so I’m well behind on what’s happening in the wider world.
zhena gogolia
@SiubhanDuinne: Count your blessings.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
Ha! I was also just in a messaging training session, only mine was given by Building Bridges for America. Ours also stressed the importance of using positive, solution-based language and avoiding the other side’s framing.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
I think the Chatham Harrison nym presents as Black, and he was joking that Biden, like Black people, was being “forgetful” and unhelpful to the “cops.”
Jackie
BettyCracker, I had almost the same experience. I wear contacts, but I don’t put them in until after a cup or two of coffee, so my first hour awake is very nearsighted. It was winter and 5 a.m. so pitch dark outside. I’d just let the pup outside and a few minutes later she started barking. I looked out the sliding door and saw a strange black cat on the steps, so I opened the slider and started to ask the cat where’d it come from.
Then the cat turned away from me and I saw a fuzzy big white stripe down it’s back… SHIT! I slammed the slider shut, but our dog got skunked and the skunk smell wafted through the poorly insulated sliding door. Good times.
Kay
Lol. Great post, BC.
Quaker in a Basement
@Adam Lang: Better this than the other way ’round. It would have been far more disturbing for the cops to find a woman sitting on the porch petting a raccoon.
Quadrillipede
I can see in focus about 5cm in front of me without my glasses on. (And I don’t like contacts, and am probably too shortsighted for laser surgery anyway, even if I did want a bright laser shone directly into my eyes, so glasses it is…)
Attempted Chemistry
@Ivan X: yeah, he’s white-haired, squinty, and a bit marble-mouthed. Trump looks younger because his hair (and face) are dyed, because extra weight makes your age vaguer, and because bluster can be confused for vigor if you’re not paying attention.
Salty Sam .
GREAT story!
sab
@Quadrillipede: I used to have amazing vision 20/20+ until my fifties. Now I am almost seventy and I am pretty much blind without progressive lenses, but still back nearly to young age prior with glasses. I never know if my vision problems are cataracts or dirty lenses.
My husband always had weak vision, but his cataract lenses have corrected so well that he has better vision than he has ever had in his life. Makes him cocky and annoying.
His ophthamologist warns him to not sell others on his results. That was just freaky good luck that her surgical options were perfect for his weird eyes.
karen gail
I find it comforting to know that I am not the only one who can’t see past end of arms without glasses, I have progressives but take glasses off to read, knit and crochet.
When I was younger my eye doctor told me to never get laser surgery, even though he was one of the pioneers of the process he worried that the scar tissue would cause me issues down the line. He told me that the only reason I should ever have surgery was if got cataracts.
Adam Lang
@Quaker in a Basement: I’d be the one petting the raccoon. And I can see just fine.
dnfree
I wonder if you lived near my Aunt JoAnne, who lived in a little cement block bungalow, painted pink, on W. Wilder Ave near the Hillsborough River. She was a well known cat lady and rescuer of feral cats and kittens in the neighborhood.