A 911 Call Story

Let me preface this story with a few tidbits about our hometown. It's a great city, even more so than I give it credit for at times. With that being said, we have had a recent spike in crime and especially home invasions over the last few months. I'll admit that when I hear car doors shut at the church across the street from our home after hours, my heart races a bit until I realize that it's just one of the Zumba junkies arriving for their 5:00 am class. And seriously, who does Zumba at 5am? Anyway, I digress...

This story begins with my little younger brother cleaning the snow off his car in the driveway at 5ish in the morning as he heads for work. It's dark, it's early (or way late depending on how you look at it), and it's freezing. As he's cleaning the car, a large, older model SUV with tinted windwos pulls up and stops in front of my parent's home. No one gets out, but the dome light comes on and my brother can see 3+ men in the vehicle. One man takes a long swig out of what appears to be a liquor bottle. And then...the ski mask comes on. Ski masks, y'all!

What does my 6'2 bean pole of a brother do? He quickly opens the garage with the key pad, literally slides under the door as it's only a few feet open at this point, shuts it back down and locks it. He then runs into my parents room, where they peacefully sleep, and frantically tells them that "some kids might be coming in a minute" and urges them to be ready. Can you imagine? If Tim woke me to "some men/some kids might be coming inside in a minute" I can guarantee you that I would pee the bed. On the spot. While crying because I just peed my pants and because I'm terrified.

Both my dad and my brother lock all the doors, my brother starts pumping his BB gun, as that's about all we have in terms of weapons, and decides to call 911. My mom relays this portion of the story, because she's disoriented, confused, and now watching my brother run between the various windows in their home, while pumping the BB gun like a mad man about to protect his earthly possession, all while giving a play by play to the 911 operator.

Brother: "They're getting out of the car now. Oh man, they have shovels!" As he's thinking to himself, they can cause some damage with those if they come in here.
911 Operator: "What are they doing now?"
Brother: "They're acting like they're shoveling! They're acting like they're shoveling!"

As we get to this point in the story, my mom is now belly laughing and breaks in "they ARE shoveling".

What started as a potential home invasion 911 call ends as the non eventful shoveling crew reporting to work. These yahoos in ski masks, apparently hired by the neighborhood to shovel the walkways, were not there to steal, kill and destroy. They were there to shovel. Not to act like they were shoveling, but to truly shovel.

Moral of this amazing story, that is way funnier when my family tells it first hand, is this:
1. Shoveling crews usually arrive in marked vehicles, not pedophile like SUVs. I can see why this would be odd that early in the am.
2. Apparently if you're a professional shoveler you might take a swig of Whiskey to warm your insides before pulling on your ski mask and braving the IL winter.
3. Visualizing my very tall and lanky 30 year old brother dive and slide under the garage door still makes me laugh out loud when I think about it. I wish we could know what the burglars shovelers thought of this man diving under the garage door!
4. If you wake me in the middle of the night with a possible intruder, throw me some TP, fresh PJs and a BB gun.

I bet that 911 operator had a fun story to share with her family over the dinner table that night. I know I thoroughly enjoyed it!