Are certain things normal/acceptable. On the off-hours those same behaviors draw attention and seem out of place. For instance:
I was driving home from work at 5AM. And when I stopped at the 4 way stop, a teenage girl came running around the corner, down the street, followed by a high school-aged boy on a bike. Did she know him? Was she being chased? I sat at the stop, watching to see if she needed help, and they seemed to know each other. Both stopped near a set of stairs and hung out. I wondered what two teenagers were doing running around at this early hour. Drugs? Did they just commit a robbery or something? I left without doing anything, because I didn’t really see anything–it was just the time of day that made it weird. . .
One Sunday at 6AM I saw two of the neighboring business owners standing across the street with tools, trying to cut down “5 minute parking” poles (not the signs, the metal poles) from a different business across the street. I guess that’s weird at any hour. And I thought it was a strange endeavor for 2 middle aged personal business owners to do at all. Parking Nazi Thugs.
The second story is perhaps more confusing: I woke up at 3AM this morning, so rather then wasting time in bed waiting for 4AM to go clean at work, I just went to get it over with. When I was driving to work (around 3:30AM) there was a woman walking up the sidewalk. No one else was about, so I just assumed she just got dropped off by the bus and was 
heading to the nearby housing. I finished driving to the end of that block, did a u-turn, parking in front of work, and that same lady was in the middle of the intersection–not 10 feet from where I had first seen her–and was staring at me.
Hmm. I sat there deciding whether or not it would be safe to get out of the safety of my car. It was dark, and the gal was about a block from my car, so I couldn’t even see the color of the clothes she was wearing. Not black though. I also couldn’t tell if she was wearing a hat or had her hair pulled back. And making out any facial features was out of the question. I could just see a white lady with a small build standing motionless in the middle of the intersection. Just looking back at me. For 5 minutes.
Well, because my apartment AND my work are not in very good areas of town, and due to the unusually early hour (and darkness) I had brought bear spray with me–which I very rarely do. Since the lady wasn’t aggressing toward me–or even moving a muscle, I decided if I came all that way, I was going to get paid. And I got out of the car, half expecting her to approach me and ask to come inside. I quickly went around my car, up the stairs, across the porch, and up the stairs and unlocked the 2 locks as fast as I could.
Then, I looked toward the intersection from inside. Still there. Still unmoving. It crossed my mind to go all the way in 
and call the police about a disoriented woman–doing no crime. But I figured if the police couldn’t be bothered to find an attacker/murderer on the Centennial Trail, coming out to see a woman doing nothing wasn’t happening. I punched in the security code, clocked in, and stood on a chair to look outside again.
The woman had moved–but only as far as the sidewalk of that same intersection. I thought maybe she was waiting to get picked up. Maybe for 
a drug deal or waiting for a john or her pimp. Who knows? She sort of stood on one sidewalk, then crossed the street and stood on the opposite sidewalk, then she turned and looked right toward me again. Did she see me?! I ducked lower in case she had–certainly she hadn’t, but it sure looked like she was looking right at me.
Then, she leaned down and picked something up off the ground. Then crossed to the opposite corner of the intersection, knelt and picked something else off the ground. Then, the went further away on the sidewalk and stopped again to pick something up. But she didn’t appear to have anything in her hands or put anything anywhere. She was picking up either pebbles or something only she could see. I watched her repeat her actions until she was out of view, then ran up stairs where she was in view again.
She stood very still, staring, meandered forward, picked something off the ground over and over until the trees obscured my view of her. I have no idea what she was doing in the empty neighborhood at 3:45AM! Drugs is my best guess. . . At 4PM I wouldn’t have though twice, but as it was–it was weird.
After work, on my drive home I looked around for her. And on the church lawn I saw someone sleeping (I think they were sleeping, at least) and I assume it was the same gal. But it wouldn’t be unheard of for someone else to be passed out around there–the section 8 housing is sketchy, there’s a large bus stop right there, and the corner stores draw in a sort of transient, sketchy crowd.
PS–I’ll bet you didn’t know that SpoKompton has the 2nd highest crime rate per capita in the entire nation. True story.
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