Okay - I live in roughly the geographic center of a major metro area. Things have been getting a bit hairier around here...
Friday night, around 1:30 ayem, was driving home from my favorite neighborhood pub (hey, I ran up a gigantic tab of $10 for the four beers I consumed over a several hour period...), and stopped to make a turn at a "left only on arrow" intersection. A young man pulls in behind me, and procedes to go bonkers after about 15 seconds of green light, but no arrow - I yelled back that it was a left only on left arrow intersection, and the car pulled into the wrong lane, and came up beside me - I then proceded to mildly panic, and yelled again that the cops gave a lot of tickets at this corner, and that we needed to wait - the guy glared at me and then actually reversed and pulled back into the space he'd just vacated... Coulda been ugly tho... No CCW in my state, but I'm leaning more and more toward carrying...
The next morning I found that someone had stolen one of my lawn chairs during the night...
Then that afternoon, while I was cleaning out my car (I do it once a decade, whether it needs it or not, so it was a major undertaking), I got approached by a panhandler - Didn't use to see that in my neighborhood.
And to cap it all off, a cop came by and gave me a serious hairy eyeball while he drove by - The way I was feeling about the back seat was almost enough to make me hope that he'd come back and stop - I can just imagine - "Whatchoo doin' in that car, you long haired hippie scum?" "Er... Sir, I'm disposing of all these old magazines and fast food wrappers." "You sure that's all, boy? Do you have any guns or drugs in that car?" "Well, sir, I think that there could possibly be _something_ underneath all that stuff - I won't stop you if you want to pull it all out..." Do you think the average cop would fall for something like that? Took me three hours to toss the trash (several good sized bags) and keep the good stuff (two paper boxes)...
Friday night, around 1:30 ayem, was driving home from my favorite neighborhood pub (hey, I ran up a gigantic tab of $10 for the four beers I consumed over a several hour period...), and stopped to make a turn at a "left only on arrow" intersection. A young man pulls in behind me, and procedes to go bonkers after about 15 seconds of green light, but no arrow - I yelled back that it was a left only on left arrow intersection, and the car pulled into the wrong lane, and came up beside me - I then proceded to mildly panic, and yelled again that the cops gave a lot of tickets at this corner, and that we needed to wait - the guy glared at me and then actually reversed and pulled back into the space he'd just vacated... Coulda been ugly tho... No CCW in my state, but I'm leaning more and more toward carrying...
The next morning I found that someone had stolen one of my lawn chairs during the night...
Then that afternoon, while I was cleaning out my car (I do it once a decade, whether it needs it or not, so it was a major undertaking), I got approached by a panhandler - Didn't use to see that in my neighborhood.
And to cap it all off, a cop came by and gave me a serious hairy eyeball while he drove by - The way I was feeling about the back seat was almost enough to make me hope that he'd come back and stop - I can just imagine - "Whatchoo doin' in that car, you long haired hippie scum?" "Er... Sir, I'm disposing of all these old magazines and fast food wrappers." "You sure that's all, boy? Do you have any guns or drugs in that car?" "Well, sir, I think that there could possibly be _something_ underneath all that stuff - I won't stop you if you want to pull it all out..." Do you think the average cop would fall for something like that? Took me three hours to toss the trash (several good sized bags) and keep the good stuff (two paper boxes)...
