So much for a leisurely afternoon walk. I was a little hesitant to head out in the first place because it’s 93 degrees and feels even hotter, but I figured hey, why not. After all the confusion this morning with the Weezer interview that was happening, then almost happened, then didn’t happen, then got slid back to early next week (for entirely legitimate reasons on their end), I figured a nice little stroll couldn’t hurt. So I find myself walking down Sunset Boulevard somewhere near Vine Street, and hey wait a minute, does that guy have a gun?
Yep, he sure does. Do I dare look up a little to see just who it is? I suppose so. Turns out he’s a Brinks security guard. Hmm, maybe he’s about to break up an attempted robbery, or fend off some thief who’s trying to attack him or his truck. And maybe I should turn around and head the other direction.
No wait a minute, he’s acting way too leisurely. There’s nothing going on, he’s just pacing up and down the sidewalk in front of the Brinks truck, waving that gun around like the way a smoker carries a lit cigarette, like the way a careless football player carries the ball just prior to fumbling. Are you kidding me? And yeah, in all his waving around, the gun does end up pointed squarely at me for just a fraction of a second. Uh, never been in this situation before. It’s not exactly the perfect neighborhood, but you know what? I walk the streets of Hollywood all the time, at all hours of the day and night, and never feel particularly unsafe. And when someone finally does point a gun at me, it’s some idiot working for Brinks who’s waving the thing around like a loaf of bread?
I know he’s not allowed to be doing that. My friend the cop, who’s acting on behalf of the government when he’s carrying his gun, isn’t legally allowed to take it out of its holster while in public like that without a specific reason. So there’s no way this private security clown isn’t breaking the law. My first and misguided instinct is to ask him to put the thing away before he hurts someone, but then it occurred to me that if he’s being this brazen, walking around with his weapon drawn on the sidewalk of one of the busiest streets in the country for no good reason, the last thing I was going to do with give this guy an actual reason to be brazen. Something’s gone defective in his head, I don’t want to find out just how badly. In other words, I didn’t want to get shot. And certainly not by a security guard. If I’m gonna get shot in Hollywood, it should at least be by that shady guy who dresses up like Captain Jack Sparrow and harangues people into taking paid photos with him on Hollywood Boulevard. At least that way I’d go out with a good story. If your obit says you were shot by an armored truck guard, people are just going to assume you were trying to rob it.
So not wanting to go out in such an uninteresting fashion, I look back down at the ground and just sheepishly keep walking, a little less shook up than I honestly was expecting to be. I get a little bit down the road and it occurs to me that I should call the cops, because hey, some idiot is waving a gun around in public. I don’t care what corporation he works for, he’s a dangerous entity. But then I look back for the first time and see that the Brinks truck is gone, and what exactly would I be reporting? That some random Brinks employee was waving his gun around carelessly somewhere near Vine Street, and now he’s gone and no I didn’t get a good look at what the guy looked like or a vehicle number?
Nah, whatever, it was over by then. I still feel like I’m somehow doing something wrong by not reporting it to someone, but I can’t imagine what I would accomplish at this point. So I arrive at the lunch spot I’m headed for, plop down for awhile, and decide to just forget about it.
On the way home, I’m walking through the crosswalk next to the CVS and some woman talking on a cell phone while driving a Jeep nearly plows into me because she’s obviously not paying attention. I shake it off, keep walking, and I make it about a hundred feet before I find myself walking across the entranceway for the CVS parking lot, and another vehicle almost hits me. No, wait a minute, it’s the same woman, driving the same Jeep, talking on the same cell phone. How much are they paying this woman to keep trying to run me over, and did the Brinks guy hire her to do it?
In a period of a bout an hour I had a gun pointed at me but didn’t get shot, and the same car nearly ran me over twice without actually hitting me. Are you kidding me? I don’t know whether to duck and cover and be afraid to leave the apartment for the rest of the day, or run out and buy a lottery ticket. Was that the unluckiest afternoon walk ever, or the luckiest?
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.