so we got robbed today…
i figured i’d just come out and say it rather than build up suspense or anything dramatic like that…actually, mugged would be the more proper word…mugged at gunpoint…that makes it sound just that much more intense…
the good thing is that i’m still here to be typing this post…and i’m typing it on my laptop…it could have easily gone a lot differently but i don’t like to think about that…i’m still processing so much of it still…it hasn’t really sunk in, though…but i can’t stop thinking about it…it might be good to rehash it all while my memory of it’s still fresh…
so half our group stayed at our friend seth’s house in kc last night…we all slept in nice and late and then got up and went to this area of town called westport or midtown or something like that to go shopping…we stopped at some pretty cool thrift stores, book stores and record shops…then we ate at this nice local deli called “the bronx”…afterwards we met up with the rest of our group and most of us went back to seth’s place to kind of chill out before we decided what we were gonna do for dinner/etc…twjr’s nate and ryan both stayed in town to read at a coffee shop and were coming back over later in nate’s car…
so most of the group was inside the house napping and watching tv but chris and i decided to possibly go do some laundry at a laundromat…we thought we’d take nate’s car to go do this so while we were waiting for he and ryan to get back we were sitting out on seth’s front porch just tooling around on our laptops…we both noticed two kids walk by on the street and kind of eye us a little bit but i tried not to snap to my small-town conclusions of what that kind of thing looks like…the kids came back by just as nate and ryan pulled up and they asked chris and i about the house (it had a for sale sign in the yard)…we didn’t know anything because we obviously were from out of town so we kind of made small talk with them while ryan and nate came up on the porch as well…
once again my small-town mind was making all kinds of snap judgments about why two black teens were trying to talk to a group of four middle-class whities and we probably should have been smarter…luckily chris and i had both packed up our laptops by the time the kids came up to the porch…i tried to be cool to them and talk to them like they were human beings and not just try to quick get out of it and avoid them like i’m prone to doing in similar situations…we told them we’re in a band on tour and we’re just staying here for the day…they asked where we were from in ohio and we told them…they said they knew some people from akron and so on…so when the talkative one of the two pulled a gun on me it came as a pretty big shocker…though it really shouldn’t have…i guess i never thought a mugger would initiate small-talk before he robs you…they never teach you that in school…
he told all four of us to get down on the ground and flashed what looked like some form of a semi-automatic weapon at us…it kind of looked like a fake to me but my fight or flight instinct wasn’t letting me ask questions at that point…we all kind of crouched on the ground and i’m not even sure what we said…i think i might have said something like “dude why are you doing this?” but i can’t remember…i’m pretty sure this was just as new to them as it was to us because he first asked for our wallets but then let us just give him our cash…instead of asking for our credit cards he asked for all our i.d.’s which didn’t make a whole lot of sense…
i forked over $30, ryan and nate only had a few bucks on them but chris had $300 on him, unfortunately…the kid tried to get chris to give him his laptop but chris said “dude i’m a musician and all my music is on this…be cool man” so the kid actually let him keep it…the whole time i’m praying he doesn’t ask for what’s in my bag that was sitting in plain view right behind me…my laptop and ipod were all in there…i’d part with that $30 plenty of times over before i’d give up that bag…chris later said that he was appealing to whatever was left of a soul in them to not take his laptop…luckily it worked but he’s obviously pretty bummed about the cash…the kid also took the keys to nate’s car which was pretty dumb because they just ran off anyways…afterwards i realized i had the van keys (which was sitting just out on the street with thousands of dollars worth of gear in it) in my front pocket and my cell phone on me as well…like i said, they definitely seemed like newbies…
they said “don’t be dumb and call the cops…we know who you are and where you live” and all that kind of tough talk…though that’s the first thing our scared little, whiteboy butts did…we ran inside and woke everyone up because they didn’t know a thing was going on out there…we called the cops and they came over right away but obviously couldn’t do much…there were two big shootings in the same precinct so all their detectives and k-9’s were being used for that…
so all in all the kids walked away with about $330 in cash…three ohio drivers license, one washington drivers license and the keys to a car they didn’t even steal…the cops were baffled as to why they took our licenses and not our whole wallets…i’m very glad they didn’t but still i don’t like the fact that they know all that info about me and that i’ll have to go through the hassle of getting a new license…what a pain that is…chris is also gonna have problems when he tries to fly back home w/o a valid i.d. for the airlines…luckily nate had a backup set of keys for his car so that was no big loss…
words can’t describe what it’s like to have a gun to your head in a moment like that…i sometimes run through scenarios like that in my mind and think how i wouldn’t be scared because the mugger is just as scared and usually the gun isn’t real or the mugger doesn’t even know how to shoot it or something like that…it’s all a load though when it actually happens…and it all happens so quick…you don’t have time to run through how you could take the guy down or talk him out of it…we’re just lucky that more wasn’t taken from us because it very easily could have been…
if nothing else it gives us all a good story to tell for this tour…hah…so far we’ve witnessed a stabbing…had our trailer break down…and got mugged…
the things we do for rock ‘n roll…
######Note: This post is from a tour blog that I dutifully kept during the summer of 2007 while touring with the band State Bird. It lives on solely so that one day I can prove to my children that I was once cool.