While perusing the options for a movie to watch later, I came across one of my old favorites, Riding in cars with boys....it has Drew Barrymore, so...nuff said.
I started it tonight after dinner and it took mere minutes before the entire family was captivated. This movie covers a wide span of time of a single mother and her son and there are so many things that I relate to.
Sometime I forgot significant moments and tonight's movie brought me back to a stray memory from when Luke was a toddler and I felt compelled to get it down before I forgot it.
Jaime and I decided one evening to drive to Syracuse with our friends David and Jaime's now husband Jessie. We were going to a battle of the bands soiree. Tracy, as usual, was the dependent babysitter. She never went with us anywhere during those times because her boyfriend was in county lock-up and she felt the need to sit next to the telephone 24-7 in case he called collect.
We had an uneventful evening right up til we pulled up to Jaime's apartment at the end of the night where everyone's cars were parked on the street. This clip in my story plays out in my memory in slow motion. For some reason, as we were getting out of my car, I happened to be looking at David because he had a really strange look on his face. If I could compare it to something it would be that moment between calm soda and the when the menthos hits the surface. I hadn't even noticed that there were police cars by where we parked our cars. I look back at Dave and follow his gaze down and across to the tires of his truck. Every single rim on his truck was surrounded by a thick, yet flaccid coat of rubber. In better terms, his tires were all devoid of air. Jaime's Nissan Pulsar with the T tops.. her tires the same. The police approached us inquiring on whether or not we owned these vehicles to which we all vacantly shook our heads yes. We got lucky because people called the police.. two people, walking by, saw what happened... thank god.
Turns out Jaime had a slighty crazy neighbor, who we had the pleasure of watching be walked, cuffed, to a police car. The neighbor, a woman in her 40s, completely random and definitely not a convict looking type woman, decided to take a knife and stab all of Jaime's tires along with Daves. She told the authorities that her and Jaime had a disagreement about the level of noise coming from Jaime's muffler. Jaime... the non-crazy one, let the police know that she and this neighbor had never said two words to each other and she had no idea what she was talking about.
48 hours later, we are packing Jaime's uhaul. Thats right.. she didn't feel safe, how about that? The neighbor back at home from a short stint in jail didn't quite sit right. Jaime and I, along with toddler Luke (3 years old), completely packed and loaded her things in and evening and a day. Luke and I spent the night so we get get up early and finish up. We went to bed exhausted and I woke up, slightly groggy, Luke got up before me. Jaime is stirring, Luke is not with her. Where, the fuck, is Luke? Luke.... is outside. I have zero idea what would compel Luke to do what he was doing, but, he was in the process of dragging lawn toys from behind the crazy neighbors house to her front lawn. He must have made at least three trips before we found him. There are many unknowns in what led up to this as Luke wasn't a reliable teller of his actions. Like.. how did he get out of bed while sleeping with me without me knowing... or.... how did he get down the flight of stairs that required a bit more than toddler mobility and dexterity... like how the heck he was able to pull all these lawn toys to the front of a crazy ladies house without grabbing her attention enough to give Luke the same fate as Jaime's tires. Holy, good god, grabber dabber, fricken scary.
Those antics aside, this crazy neighbor did actually end up going to jail for years, but it was not for slashing tires. It was for being an arsonist. She started breaking into houses in the neighborhood and starting fires. One of the houses being the one that housed Jaime's apartment, the day after she moved out. She had a feeling, glad she trusted it. The neighbor ended up getting caught when she was trying to start a fire at the house where her kids were spending the night. The tires were nothing compared to the true scope of what she was capable of.
Yep, so that happened...
