If you are here for IT content – this is not one of those posts. It also doesn’t feature any new song and it’s NOT politically correct. But it is a true story that happened to us while living in the United States.
It was Friday night. Or you could call it Saturday ‘morning’ – basically it was fairly late, like quarter to 2 AM in the middle of your weekend, after a very hectic week – we were finally relaxing: we had had dinner, watched a movie, the kids had all gone to sleep, me and my wife had made love and we had been talking in bed and we were finally starting to fall asleep. We both were in that in between state between darkness and wonder, when you aren’t completely in Morpheus’ arms yet but not fully awake either. But pretty damn relaxed and almost ready for some great night sleep…
…thump…
I start hearing noises – are they from outside? A car? People? Not sure, I try to ignore them but they kind of broke the spell already… Is anyone with military boots walking in my dream or in my front yard? Are those our crackling wooden steps to the door that I hear? I have never been scared for burglars and the like – we simply don’t own anything that is worth stealing… wait, are they knocking at the door?
I realize my wife’s breathing has also changed, she is half awake too, I ask: “Is that our door that they are knocking at?” – and they knock again, harder – this time we are sure we heard it right. Is this a nightmare? I try to crawl out of bed, put something on (I was previously naked)… the knocking continues and my temper starts raising as I get worried they – whoever it is – might be waking up my little daughter (or her older brothers, but she’d be more effort to then calm down again if she wakes up with nightmares…). I walk thru the corridor, down the little stair (the house was on a split level) and reach the door – still in the dark. I ask: “Who’s there?” and I receive a thunder in return: “Police!”.
Not sure I can recollect all that went thru my mind – now even more confused if this was some kind of nightmare I was in – and my heart started racing. I froze. I have done nothing wrong, I thought. What could they possibly want at this hour of the night?
I try to mumble something like “I am trying to open the door” – which was indeed what I was trying to do, but I was still in the dark, incapable of thinking straight and finding the light switch.
I fiddle with the doorknob and lock enough and eventually I manage to open the door on a gap – I am still in the dark indoor, and the outdoor lamp is still on and blinds me from behind two tall, dark, male figures with weapons et all… I am frightened but I nonetheless attempt to pull out a straight face and say something. In the absurdity of the situation, the only thing that comes out of my mouth is: “Whatsup?”.
The police officer does not seem amused, and he asks for Joshua.
I think a million things again – has he done something wrong maybe? He’s such a good boy…
I say I am not Joshua, that my son is downstairs, in his room, presumably sleeping. I hear in the back that now my daughter has woken up from the noise (and the tension in the air) and my wife is attending her, trying to calm her down. The officer explains that there is no time to lose, that they had received a call from a very good friend of Joshua and she thought he might be committing suicide because he was not returning her messages and had turned off his phone (!?). It takes me a minute to register what I just heard – did he just say that? Suicide? Joshua? What does he know about Joshua anyway? Since when is it a felony to switch off a phone? I am the teen’s parent, I have seen him grow up, he’s a stable boy (especially when I see other teenagers). Whatever ‘very’ good friend – since we had only been in the states a couple of years at that point and Joshua had changed schools in between – is probably just some hormonal teen who wants attention, I think – but I of course I don’t say this. I just say “yes, I know that he broke up with his girlfriend, but we talked about it and he seemed pretty fine with this, almost relieved. I don’t think he would commit suicide; certainly not for this.”. As a matter of fact, the counselor and principal of the school had spoken with my wife about this during the day, and they had informed us they knew about the ‘break up’ and that they had spoken to Joshua and he seemed fine (and may I admit that this thing *already* looked like over-protective and privacy invading to us?).
But the police men insist they have received a call and they need to perform their duty and make sure he’s fine. My wife also comes by, I tell her something quickly about what’s going on, but basically we have to walk down and make an entrance into Joshua’s room, and turn on the lights and brutally wake him up and have the office verify that indeed he seemed quite fine. Joshua explained he had just turned off his phone as he wanted to sleep. Thank you for coming by.
They eventually concluded there was no evident risk, and left. Nothing happened, no ‘formal’ consequences…
…but I didn’t sleep that night until 3 hours later, and I think the rest of the family slept uneasily too.
And I have slept crap since that day for the couple of years afterwards, and I never felt safe in my own house again. Or anywhere.
How do they dare to think they know our son better than we do?
How can they listen to a report of a hormonal teen and just raid into people’s homes like that?
What a fuzz, and what an annoying invasion of privacy – into my son’s private life as well as in our home!
American citizens worry for the NSA but they don’t worry for this kind of behavior. Most don’t even seem to ‘see’ the issue here – the scariest thing of all is the reaction of some of our American friends once we told them this story: some of them were along the lines of “how good/nice that they came to check! Makes you feel safe, doesn’t it?”. And they were not being sarcastic – they positively thought that was a good thing.
You can keep that if that makes *you* feel secure.
It make me literally pooh-pooh my pants. I felt I (we, all) were at the mercy of total randomness and we had to be scared of the people around us, because they could easily be following their paranoia’s and get us into trouble, with no proof whatsoever needed to initiate the process.
I had never heard of or lived anything like this. Besides in the stories of the people deported by the Nazi’s to the concentration camps – in no country in Europe you get the police at your door in the middle of the night for something like this!
This type of situations is one of the reasons that made us really stressed and sick (call us over-sensitive) in the last couple of years we have been in America, and we eventually decided it was not the place for us, and we moved back to Europe. I will be sharing some other stories and reasons in future posts… stay tuned.