GLENN SHAHEEN
They Are Legion and Bustle About Calling Bermuda! Bermuda!
The animals from outside making themselves clear in their various songs and the people too outside in morning awakening to put keys in their ignitions to slam doors shut and drive off and when they drive off I feel more comfortable am happier there are fewer people outside near me fewer people who may call on me for help and I would help them yes if I could like once a woman screamed for help when I was babysitting and I took the child in my care with me to see what was wrong which was not exactly a safe or wise choice from the babysitting perspective and the woman was on top of a car and a large dog was barking at her had chased her up there and the dog came up to me and the child who was in my arms believed it was all fun but the dog thankfully ran away and the woman was safe but I should not have helped her and I did not exactly want to help her in that it would have been easiest not to help her easiest to call the cops or presume somebody else would have arrived soon and more recently a child on this street screamed for help from the upstairs of a neighbor’s house and after waiting a few minutes I walked to the yard of the house and called up to see if the child needed help as the child was so requesting in wail and the child claimed his or her dog was sick and asked for me to call their parents but I said I did not know their parents and the child asked me what church I went to asked if I went to the Methodist church on Oakland and I said that was not my church which was true yes in that no church is my church and the child could not believe I did not know their parents which I did only by sight as two thin white people who dress conservatively and yell at our young neighbors when they play classic 90s hip-hop on Sundays because this is a family neighborhood they need to respect families and the child was saying the dog puked twice and the dog only usually pukes once and the child asked me to knock on the blue house and then the yellow house to see if anybody was home who might know their parents the child I forgot to mention was locked in their room and not allowed to go downstairs to use the phone nobody was home in the blue house and nobody was home in the yellow house I yelled up to the child whom I never saw during this whole ordeal and asked if they needed me to call the police because it could have been a child who was kidnapped who never knew who was listening and was trying to speak to me in code but the child said their parents hate the police and for me not to call them and asked if I could call their minister whose name they did not remember and I told the child there was nothing I could do to help them and when I left the child kept calling for help out the window and eventually the cops showed up I hope nobody got hurt over it.