Sunday, September 7, 2008

The Man In The Blue Jumpsuit

Today my life became a CSI episode without the benefits of Marg Helgenberg, Armani suits, and layers of sprayed on make-up. An Armenian man crashed into a tree outside our house. He fell from his white mini van with blood gushing from his face and with a stagger that would put a drunken college boy to shame. My neighbors and I, with Blackberries and IPhones in hand, stood watching, whispering...wondering if he was drunk, high, or just disoriented from his head on collision with a stationary object. "Are you okay," I asked. No response. Just some shuffling from the driver's door to the back. "Do you need me to call anyone for you," I shouted, wondering if maybe he just didn't hear me the first time. I received a grumble, some words shoved together not in any order, more just like sounds really. The airbag in his van had exploded, and white powder was filling the air, with what some around me thought to be smoke. But, I knew better. I had been the first one on the scene. I saw him open his door and scream as he fell to the pavement. I saw the white powder as it escaped from the balloon that now covered his steering wheel.
As we waited for the police..the firetrucks...the ambulance to arrive, the Armenian man in the blue jumpsuit began to walk down the street with a cell phone he recovered from the sidewalk yards away. We tried to stop him, but he just kept walking, with blood coating his face. Within minutes, the police arrived and I told them that the man in the blue jumpsuit had escaped, and had disappeared around the corner. They jumped into their vehicle and peeled away, racing down the street, in the direction I had pointed. Soon, a helicopter hovered overhead, searching the tree lined streets for the man in the blue jumpsuit.
Eventually, I went back inside the house, mainly because I was judging every other person who sat outside watching the drama unfold. It took me about five minutes to realize I was one of those people.
Twenty minutes passed and I heard a knock on the front door. It was the police. They wanted to know what I saw. I told everything I knew and he asked me to describe what the man was wearing. "A blue jumpsuit," I replied. He nodded is head and asked if I could come to the hospital to ID him. "ID him? You mean like pick him out of a lineup?" I asked. The officer, realizing my panic, and my obsession with Crime dramas, reassured me that I would simply be pointing to him at the hospital and saying, "Yes, that's him."
I'm still waiting for the officer to come back and get me. That was two hours ago. Maybe I scared him off?

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