'Bred Crumbs
08.02.04
Belligerent Buddies
12:30 PMWalking in the neighborhood Saturday evening, we came upon a couple standing on either side of a car parked at a corner. The woman stood by the driver's side and looked bored. The man was yelling into the car:
"Get out of my car!"
Repeatedly, and sternly. As we got closer, we saw that he was trying to drag someone out of the backseat by a leg. We could glimpse the person inside: a middle-aged man who looked very out of it, and seemed maybe to have a scar or cut on his forehead.
What? Some kind of bizarre assault? A homeless guy who snuck into the car and squatted?
We rounded the car and quickly debated whether to do something, and what that something would be. We decided to call the police (but again, what? 911? Is it an emergency if you don't really know what's happening?), but by the time we were about to punch the numbers, the man who was not in the car had quit tugging and was on the phone himself. We couldn't hear what he was saying or tell whom he was talking to, but this wasn't seeming like a either a crime of passion or a case of insanity. Neither the outside man nor the woman was showing any concern that this was happening very much in public. Indeed, the woman, bored-looking as ever, was now chatting with a passer-by.
As the man resumed shouting and pulling at the car's stubborn occupant, I asked the woman if they needed any help with anything.
"Oh no," she said, with the indifference of a fast-food clerk. "They're friends. This happens all the time."
Ohhhh-K then. Someone might want to shop for some new friends.
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