Just straight chaos all around

Gavin turned 23 yesterday. We went to work anyway (he’s been subbing at the library for the past few months) and our student worker came in after school looking like she had put a finger in an electrical socket. She was pretty shaken up, and told a story with full pantomime about what had just happened in PE: one of the students, who was big for a 14 year old, had lost his temper over losing at badminton too many times and attacked the teacher. Then he attacked the security guard, a small scrappy woman who managed to shove the teacher into a room for safety while classmates tried to dogpile the kid. He knocked them all aside like the Hulk, trying to get at the guard, until he finally got bulldozed into a corner by some of the kids on the football team, who held him there until the police came to get him. He got hauled out, yelling and screaming and threatening to kill everyone and their family, police included, and got himself handcuffed and shoved into a police car. Our student worker and her friends had been scrambling around to keep out of his way while he was rampaging through the gym. Holy shit. Badminton must be a hell of a sport.

In the evening we drove over to my mom's and had dinner at the Mexican restaurant across the street from her house. Afterwards, walking back to her place for cake, a geyser of water was shooting up out of a busted fire hydrant at the end of the driveway. We stopped before crossing and watched fire trucks pull up to block the road in both directions. Then we saw the truck, standing on its nose between two smashed cars in front of the neighbor’s house. 

Somehow, in the short distance between the shopping center and the road, this guy had managed to gain enough speed to clear two speed bumps, fly straight across the road with no attempt to turn, crash into the fire hydrant, launch over an entire tree, smash the neighbor's parked car, flip onto a second parked car, and end up completely vertical. We ran across the road and realized that the driver was still trapped inside.

All the neighbors were gathering in the parking lot, and a cry of relief went up when we saw the figure leaning against the window raise an arm. The firemen got the doors open with a crowbar and pulled him out. He was trying to help them, pulling himself up so they could get their arms around his waist, and he was wearing a blue shirt with STAFF written across it in huge letters. The closer neighbors recoiled and yelled to the rest of us that he smelled like alcohol. I had been ready to wrap my arms around Zenny's face to keep her from seeing a dead body, but he just had a bit of blood on the back of his head. Police arrived, and we all heard them assess the situation while the firemen and paramedics rolled the guy away: drunk, no license, no insurance, expired tags, and a prior record of the same. He's going to be in some trouble when he's out of the hospital. Thank goodness it had been raining - that unit usually has kids playing outside on the sidewalk. A few feet to the left and it would have gone through their living room. 

Once the guy was removed, alive and in one piece, the mood lightened and all the neighbors started posing for pictures with the upended truck and geyser. We sang Happy Birthday to Gavin.

And this is why I’m getting a truck while I'm learning to drive on ice.

After the ambulance left, the firemen got the hydrant shut off and prepped the truck for supports. One of them banged a small hole in the door for the fork of the support beam to fit into, and a 4 year old gasped, shocked, and yelled, “HE DENTED IT!” We all started laughing. Miraculously, an intact case of sparkling cider bottles was sitting upright on the ground in the flattened ruins of the two neighbors' cars. If that doesn’t bring them good luck when they ring in the new year, nothing will.

We arrived home late, and just before bed, Leif suddenly got upset while looking at his phone. He had texted his friend about the accident, and his friend had started sending him panicky screen shots about a school shooting planned for the next day: the kid who had gotten arrested for threatening to kill everyone over being bad at badminton had gotten released, and immediately started posting pictures of guns and promises to shoot up the school the next day. A rumor started up that he was going to target Seniors for some reason. Now, I know that 14 year-olds are mostly full of shit, but this kid had already been kicked out of two schools and thrown off the football team for violence, it's completely possible he could have access to firearms, and I am not about to send my kids into a situation where they're genuinely scared they're going to die. It is always better to overreact when it comes to child safety. We called them out of school this morning and reported the threat - along with half the other families in the school. The principal had to issue a statement assuring everyone that the kid had been expelled and his grandparents had him locked down, with promises to call the police if he tried to leave the house.

And while that was going on, a storm blew through and took down the power lines. We sat in the dark at the library while people came in and asked if the computers were working because they just needed to print something really fast. Get out.

2025 has been wild. I have changed my mind about adventure, I want cozy socks and piles of blankets for 2026.

edited to add this small nice thing:

One of our regulars is a guy named Fred. He is a tough-looking leathery guy in his 60s with a bristly white mustache and an Australian hat. He sits for hours every day sucking on Ricolas loudly and banging at the keyboard with his index fingers, pursuing his lifelong goal of destroying (or at least perpetually inconveniencing) his arch enemy; the guy who shot his donkey 15 years ago. Also the guy's lawyer, who has to reply to his endless legal complaints for years on end. Fred and Annie have developed a mostly silent friendship; he jump-scares her by poking her ribs whenever he comes in, and she goes over to pat his arm whenever she comes in. The other day, while she was typing her memoirs and still sad about the Christmas story, he pulled a fresh Aussie hat out of his backpack and put it on her head as he was leaving. She asked if it was his, and he said, "It's yours now," and left. She was still wearing the hat when she went home at the end of the day. She really needed that small kindness. Incidentally, Fred is also the guy who pulled a kitten out of his backpack and gave it to me when I was having a particularly hard day last year. He has a way of knowing. I hope he outlives the donkey killer and gets a new little burro to love some day.