Hoodlums

My day started late after my wife and I overslept. After dropping her off at work, I headed to Aldi to get some cheap groceries. We have to cut back on costs due to unforeseen circumstances that caused a necessary and expensive purchase. Well, I made out good, spending only $50 on groceries that normally cost us $100 at our preferred market: Meijer. Proud of my cheap spoils of supermarket war, I headed home. I wasn't inside my apartment very long before I heard a commotion going on outside of my balcony. Two boys were fighting. Maybe I shouldn't say boys, how about teenagers. Two teenage boys were fighting below my balcony right outside the door of the building with a crowd of other teenagers watching them. Some yelled out as if coaching the boys how they should fight. Now I had just come through that door to come upstairs to my apartment, and I need to go back down to get more from the car. But I wasn't going down there while they were causing a scene. So I called Security. Last time I had called, they took they're time before appearing at the scene. It may have been because I called the apartment offices rather that the security's direct line. But this time, they were fast as a bullet. A black Mercury Marauder came peeling down the parking lot and screeched to a stop outside of my apartment. The teenagers standing around the door yelled "Cops!" and took off into the building. This I was surprised of. I was thinking the guards would come walking down on foot and yell for the boys to stop fighting, the boys would disband and that would be that. But these boys ran! Maybe something more was going on that I wasn't aware of, but the security guards pursued the boys into the building. About ten minutes later, the guards returned with no one and I heard them call over their walkies that the boys had run and they lost them in the building. Sad day. I kinda wanted to see those kids disciplined. Especially if they feel the need to run from authority.
Now since no one had been caught, I was still apprehensive about going out to my car, since those boys may have been skulking around still, but after about an hours wait and no sign of them, I headed out to retrieve the rest of my groceries. I bring the last bags inside and decide to go back out and clean off a grease smudge on the inside windshield of the car. Just as I head back outside, those boys come strolling back to the building door. I pass them as I head to my car and hope they don't know that I was the one who called on them. I get in my car, and do a few contradictory things, trying to decide whether to call security again from the car, drive away and call, or go back up to the apartment and call. Well they looked as if they didn't actually have a key to the building, and were probably waiting for someone to let them inside. I didn't want to do that so I drove around the parking lot and gave security a call. I got an answering machine. An answering machine!? How does that help me? I understand they may be out helping someone else, but there should still be someone to always take calls! Well, by the time I returned to the building they were gone. I assume someone else had let them inside and they were probably inside an apartment of someone they knew here.

Sigh

I definitely didn't want to tells this guys to skiddaddle myself and cause my apartment, vehicle, and wife to become the target of any trouble. I just want to live in peace with out stupid teenage hoods looming over everything.

They day we returned home from visiting family, there were gunshots in the distance. I've lived in the country, and I know what that sound is. I know the difference between a firing engine and a gunshot. I also know that I heard that gun fired a few times that night.

I only wish people were so stupid. Honestly, it is the culture here. People are raised to think all this shit is normal. Call me prejudice/racist/whatever. I know this to be true. I wish something would slap some sense into people here. I wish I could slap them and smack some sense into their think skulls.

The only power I have is to pray. God knows. I leave them to him.