Neighborhood Watch

I was driving down the road this morning and passed a car down the street from my house that had a man asleep in it. He was sitting straight up in the seat, and the windows were rolled down, even though it is cold outside. Something about it struck me as a little odd.

An hour later I drove back, and passed him again, and he was still asleep, exactly as he had been an hour earlier. Something just seemed odd to me. I don't know what it is about me, but I can't let things like that go. I came home and called my neighbor and asked her advice. She said I should call the non-emergency police line. But then she said, "Do you want to walk over there? I'll walk with you." I said, "Okay, I need to walk my dog anyway, let's walk past and look." So we got the dogs and walked down the street. We stopped to talk to a neighbor, so it took us a few minutes to get down there. We walked past, and he was still sitting there asleep. We made some noise, but he didn't budge. But it did look like he had rearranged his head.

I told my neighbor that I know someone who was doing drugs in a car once and passed out, and his friend called the police because he thought he had died. She encouraged me to call the non-emergency line and tell them that. So we walked back home and I called them. I explained that it could be that they guy was just asleep, but that he had been sitting there in his car for over 1 1/2 hours with the windows down, and I just wanted to make sure he was okay. The dispatcher sounded like she thought I did the right thing to call it in.

I decided to walk my dog a little more, so I head back down the street. Just as I was turning around to go back home, I saw a police car drive up. I saw him slowly pass the car so he could look inside. He pulled over and approached the car. I was too big of a chicken to walk past them, so I went another way. But at one point I doubled back and could hear them talking. So I guess the guy is okay, but the policeman did talk to him for quite awhile.

I don't know why I have to act on these kinds of things. It's just part of my personality. My kids get embarrassed by it, and my husband doesn't understand why I think it's my business to get involved with the lives of total strangers. But all I know is that it would have bugged me all day if I didn't know that man was okay. I probably would have had to make several more trips down the street to check on him until he woke up. :)