Almost 6 months since I wrote here. Well, that happens in a busy business live - and then suddenly you experience another Stop/Start moment which needs to be written down.
Last evening was such a moment. Sitting in the living room around 9pm, watching Britain's Got Talent after a late dinner, both Ton and I almost jumped out of our skin when a loud crashing sound disrupted the evening.
Something had hit our living room window. And very, very hard. One moment I feared the glass would shatter into a thousand pieces, but fortunately that didn't happen. Had someone shot at the window, someone thrown a stone to it with great force? We went out site where the front door light - which works on a sensor - was already shining. Was someone out there, close by, ready to 'attack'?
We saw nothing in the little alley next to our house, nor in the passageway to the School entrance and parking. Nothing on the School sport field either. We did see a small group of young teenagers run as if the devil was chasing them on the path between the fence of the sport field and the playing area behind the High Street. And then I saw a lid of a can laying in our front garden, the lid blown off with some force it seemed.
A 'prank' gone a bit wrong? An teenager's experiment gone a bit wrong? You shudder to think how terrible wrong this could have gone. Trying - and succeeding - to explode a can of drinks where the lid turned into a missile, by accident 'only' hitting our window without causing damage or harm. What if the unexpected missile had hit one of the teenagers - you can imagine standing huddled around the experiment, or, if they had any sense at all, at a safer distant. But the pathway is over 200 meters away from our home! What's a safe distant?
I sincerely hope all of them are fine, and also hope they jumped out of their skin too when the can exploded, like we did. I also realised how such an event can put the fear of the unknown in someone. Our first reaction was indeed: someone's firing at us (bullet or stone), we're under some kind of attack! Even if you live in a nice, mostly quiet, village not known for violent encounters.
Then you kind of start to think of the pranks we used to do - and I'm sure you've done them too - when we were young and 'innocent' children/teenagers. Never realising how such a prank could effect someone you did not even know/notice became a 'victim' of your mischief.
How often did we ourself put unnecessary fear into the life of someone else, who didn't realise it wasn't meant malicious, just a mischief.
Nothing to fear but fear itself.
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