I so wish that I could find Mr. Policeman by Brad Paisley to add to my playlist for this post. If you haven't heard this song, it's a riot, as are many of his songs. We had our own little version of this song on General Conference Sunday. It was in between sessions, and Jon came up to the front of the house to tell me that there is some strange guy walking around in our back yard. Our yard is not fenced, but that doesn't mean that it is public property! Anyways, Jon watches him walk along the side of the house towards the front, then the guy sees a car on the street and comes back and hides behind a corner of our neighbor's fence. We're just thinking that he's playing some stupid game of hide and seek with his friends. By this time we were both watching him through our living room window, hoping that he'll glance over and notice the perturbed look on our faces so we don't have to go outside and tell him to leave. Then, all of a sudden he turns around and hops over another neighbor's fence, breaking it in the process, and takes off through their yard and hops another fence. Then we see a police officer come running along the side of our house after him. I panic and we both run to lock doors. I immediately grabbed the phone to call my friend Teresha who lives right behind us and asked her to make sure her doors were locked, too, since he had originally come from the direction of her house. The police officer disappears and we just keep thinking how crazy that was. We watched for a few minutes and then suddenly the strange guy comes back through the second yard towards our house. I'm freaking out because the police officer is no where in sight, but the the guy jumped a third fence in to a different yard right next to us and started walking in the opposite direction. This whole time I'm on the phone with Teresha relaying what is happening. A minute or two go by and then I look again to see what appears to be a couple police officers with the guy on the ground. I went to the front of the house to watch them bring him to the police car, only to find the normal police car along with 3 sherriff's vehicles parked in front of our house. There were about 5 more officers standing around, too. Jon notices the first police officer come back through the yards and goes out to make sure the guy has been apprehended. They pat him down out front and I let Teresha know that everything was OK. Not a minute later her husband, Nick (who is also our bishop) comes from their yard through ours to see if he can find out what was going on. Apparently he was a shoplifter! I guess that makes me feel better, knowing that he was probably not very dangerous. Could have fooled me with the police response, though! It must have been a slow crime day, although running from the police is never a good idea. Maybe he had something else besides the shoplifting that he was worried about being caught for. Who knows, but it was crazy!
