This morning, against my better judgment, I went to work. I had a brief thought – very brief – of finding a way to call in ‘sick’ simply because I knew my pants were going to be uncomfortable. But, let’s be honest, it’s a slippery slope from there to “Oh, gee, I cut my gums flossing this morning and I need to go back to bed.” Or, “Oh, no, I have a tangle in my hair and.. yeah, better go read a library book until I can cope with it!”
Realistically, there are very few days when I can call in sick without making it really crappy for my co-outreach guy, so I try avoid calling in sick at all. He’s totally cool with it if I need to do it, but I don’t want to call in that favour too often.
Anyway, I knew the pants were going to be uncomfortable, and I knew it was going to suck, so I had planned to spend the morning at the outreach location wearing jeans and, after lunch, change into my soft yoga pants for my time at the office in the afternoon.
I will need to glaze over some details in the rest of this story – first, because there are some parts that I’ve only heard (didn’t see) and others because I’m trying to manage some degree of anonymity for everyone involved AND the location where I was working (because I know all of you are itching to show up there and stalk me. Right?)
When I got to the location, I was already tired and sweaty and just wanted to sit in a chair. I felt a little nauseated. Meh. I hadn’t done anything particularly strenuous but, apparently, losing my gallbladder has made me wussy. (That, and I didn’t sleep well last night.)
Mid-morning, one of the patrons of the outreach location got angry and violent and caused a ruckus. The staff there – the ones in charge of this sort of thing – quickly moved things outdoors and managed to diffuse everything. While this sort of thing doesn’t happen often, it does happen, and the staff are amazing at handling things. The entire place has a non-violence philosophy and it’s truly awesome to see it in practice and action. Seriously.
I didn’t think much of it because it’s not my job to handle these things, it wasn’t directed at me (i.e., I wasn’t involved in it) and the staff were fine without me.
Shortly thereafter, someone came up and said, “Here’s your license plate.” She handed me a mangled-up sheet of metal that yes, in fact, was my license plate. The look on her face, and probably mine, was hilarious. “You might want to go downstairs. That dude is trying to rip your bumper off of your car.”
Wait, what? What dude? And why is he taking umbrage with my bumper?
On getting downstairs and out the door, I came across a scene involving a large number of staff members (and some patrons) pinning a very large screaming man to the ground. Several other people were wandering around with visible wounds and bleeding. And the police arrived shortly thereafter.
Whoah.
My car, missing its license plate (which was still in my hand) was sporting a brand new foot-shaped dent, complete with missing paint. And the rear window had a large boot print on it. The bumper was still attached, at least, and there didn’t appear to be any other damage, save for some scrapes.
The police took my statement, asked some questions, took some photos. They loaded the guy into their car – kicking and screaming, still. They gave me my incident number and, well, that’s that.
Suffice to say, I went home exhausted and perplexed and decided to stay home for the afternoon instead of going to the office.
I’m not angry or mad. I’m just.. tired. It wasn’t anything personal – I know this, without question, for a variety of reasons that I can’t really get into here. This guy wasn’t in good shape and he wasn’t attacking my car, he was just attacking. Same for the innocent bystanders and the staff and whatever else he went after… It wasn’t about them.
I totally should have stayed home in my jammas. So much for easing back into things.
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