Occluded joy

It is 12:20 a.m. I planned on just staying up tonight so I could watch the meteor shower. When I heard the distinct rumble of thunder and saw the dog skulk into the bathroom, I didn't want to look outside.

I did look outside, though, only to see a white sky opaque with cloud cover. Lightning flashed off to the north and more low thunder rolled through the night. Along with an ambulance and a firetruck.

We live less than a half-mile from the interstate, and just a couple of blocks off of a main road. We hear sirens all the time. Tonight, though, I heard the sirens and then they stopped at the edge of our neighborhood. About 30 seconds later, though, I saw the flash of red and blue lights blurring through the window shade. Ah, no noise in the residential areas after midnight. I did what anyone would do. I got up to take a look.

Both vehicles came to a stop about a half-block straight ahead of my front door (our house caps off a "T" intersection). Lots of people exited both vehicles and went into the nearest house. I turned off the lights at my house, grabbed the binoculars out of the closet, and stepped onto the porch. This is really the most fascinating thing going on at this time of night, and having been denied my meteor shower, I was willing to be a nosy neighbor just for the hell of it.

I realized that perhaps I wasn't being all that mature when it occurred to me that I had wedged myself into the darkest corner of the front porch. That was a challenge, since there's a street light right out front.

My binoculars are very good. I took the opportunity to adjust the binocular vision and reset the focus. Obviously, my husband had recently been nosy, too. I'll have to ask him about that. He'll probably tell me he was looking at the shingles on the roof.

Eventually, someone was put into the ambulance, but there didn't appear to be any urgency in anyone's demeanor. The ambulance stayed several minutes before leaving. The neighbor who lives across the street from where the ambulance was seems to somehow be involved with this, as he came out of the house with the EMTs and stayed and talked to them for quite some time. He had his cell phone out and was using that, as well. As the ambulance pulled away, the neighbor went into his own house. Hmmmm....

I really need to get a life.