It is mosquito season, so to avoid the clouds that surround my head the second I step outside, I thought I would take my dog on a walk early. I stepped outside and walked to my car and low and behold there in the grass, right next to my car, was a hatchet.
Of course my mind immediately went to all the horrible crime drama television shows I have ever watched. Was the ax murderer on his way to my back door, to break in and chop me into pieces? Was he foiled by some passerby just in the nick of time, and dropped his weapon and fled?
I picked up the hatchet, then quickly switched my grip to the blade. After all, this could have been used to commit a crime and may need to be fingerprinted. I placed it on the table in my garage, loaded up my dog, and drove downtown to the Capital area, where I am pretty sure I won't run into any loose dogs.
On our way down the sidewalk, just in front of the Michigan Supreme Court Building, I ran into a State Police officer. "Good morning," I said. "Good morning," he replied. "I have a strange question to ask you," I said, knowing he is already staring at my left eye, swollen from a bee sting yesterday. I proceeded to tell him about the hatchet and asked if he thought I should contact the police, just in case. He said yes, so I called the Lansing Police Department and they said they would send an officer over.
We hoofed it as fast as we could go back to my car and sped off to the house, hoping to get there before the police showed up. My neighbor told me as I pulled in the driveway that the officer just left. Of course. "Did you find a hatchet in your yard?" the neighbor asked. "Yes," I said, suspicious...was HE the ax murderer? "We saw a group of twelve-year olds last night at two in the morning, using a hatchet on trees, telephone poles, anything they could chop on, just a bunch of kids. They threw it at your tree but missed and it landed in your front yard and they just kept on walking. No big deal, just some kids."
No big deal.
What kind of kids, twelve-year olds to boot, are out walking around at two in the morning with a hatchet? I don't know about you but where I come from that is something to be concerned about. Where are their parents? What are they doing out that late? And what is there intention carrying around a hatchet? And why do they think it OK to destroy public and private property?
I had to call the police back and they sent the officer over again. He didn't want to take the hatchet, two hours of paperwork he said and they would just throw it in the trash. Just some kids, he said. Just some kids??? I hate to think what those kids will be doing in five more years.
He asked if there was still an issue with speeders on my street. "Yes," I replied, "and gun shots in the park weekly. And there are also numerous mini bikes, go carts, and four wheelers travelling at high speeds up and down my street." "Not much we can do about that, I mean really how would it look to the public if we gave a kid a ticket for riding a go cart in the park" (which is prohibited by law, I might add). I am wondering if this is the same officer who told the ex con down the street that he was pretty sure the ex con wasn't supposed to be in possession of the shotgun he had just used to kill a raccoon in a tree, which incidentally landed on the police car hood (I am not kidding). He told the ex con that he didn't want to know and gave him a ticket for discharging a firearm in the city limits.
Anyway, the officer said they are so short staffed they have to focus on more serious issues (my hatchet obviously wasn't one of them). I thanked him and off he went.
Now I know some of you are saying, why don't I just move out of the city?
Over the years I have learned that I am much safer as a lesbian living a city than I ever would be in small town USA. And that makes me angry and very sad. I don't have the freedom to live where I want to. Forget the whole "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" thing. It is an illusion for people like me. Yes, we won the right to marry but there is still so far to go. I would much rather have a cabin in the northwoods and go to sleep listening to the sounds of frogs or crickets instead of gunfire and sirens. My soul yearns to look up into the night sky and see the Milky Way, the Aurora Borealis, a shooting star. I want to breathe in the scent of pine trees and rivers, hear the rushing of water over rapids or the waves lapping the shore. I grieve over this.
But at least I can eat in a restaurant and not have to hear the bigoted comments of the locals. I can go to celebrations for people like me if I choose. I am surrounded by the beautiful diversity of different races and cultures of people. I have a park in my backyard and am friends with the snakes and toads, skunks and raccoons, and even the sparrows that are living inside my wall right now raising a family. I can tap the trees and make syrup, and grow my apples and grapes, and have illegal campfires and parch corn and wild rice, and raise my honeybees without the fear of someone driving by yelling a derogatory name at me.
So I try to feel grateful that I have a safe harbor somewhere in the world. But it is a very high price to pay for someone like me, who is as much a child of the woods as she is a lesbian.
As long as there is such hatred and bigotry in small town America, I will always have to live in the city. Hatchets and all.
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