At 11:35 PM on Wednesday, 4-19-2017, I parked my car on 49th Street between Hamilton and Caldwell Streets, next door to the apartment building I live in. (No space was available in the building's parking lot.)
Before I could shut the ignition off, a man in his twenties or thirties approached me. I went ahead and rolled my car's left front window down.
First thing he asked me: "Do you have a cigarette?"
"No," I told him. "I don't smoke."
"Do you have a cell phone that works?" he asked me.
"No, I don't," I answered.
This same man then pulled a gray semiautomatic handgun, pointed the gun at me, and asked me for my car keys. After I turned the ignition off and relinquished the keys, he instructed me to "Run down the street. I won't try to hurt you."
He pointed toward Caldwell Street, and I ran down Caldwell...for a few seconds.
I then turned around and saw him speed up 49th Street before he made a right turn to Hamilton.
After that, I jogged (and eventually walked quickly) toward home.
At 11:45 PM, I called the Omaha Police and reported the theft. About a half hour later, two officers and, later, a detective stopped to interview me about the carjacking.
This incident DOES have a happy ending:
At 1:57 AM that Thursday morning, the police phoned me to let me know that my vehicle was found...in a parking lot at the 3000 block of South 104th Plaza.
Two more OPD officers stopped by outside the apartment building I live in to deliver my car...and I was able to drive it again at 2:56 AM that Thursday morning.
The car was left intact.
In fact, the thief not only left $2.14 in change in my 2006 car...he also left a Black & Mild cigar band inside the car (as well as the cigar's wrapper).
I LUCKED OUT!!
Even so, the second-guessing already has begun: A loved one told me that "I would've just rolled the window back up and driven off."
With my luck, I would've been shot and killed for rolling the window back up.
This is why I've felt reluctant all these years to tell loved ones about personal troubles. When I make a move to try and change all that, this is what I get: "I would've just rolled the window back up and driven off."
Things just AREN'T that simple!
This morning, a reporter from one of the local TV stations interviewed me about the incident as part of that station's report tonight about local carjackings.
I originally intended to tune in...but because of tonight's second-guessing by this loved one, I won't watch tonight.
I mean, it's not enough that the last 94 hours have been ruined because of this carjacking.
It doesn't matter to that second-guesser that I'm safe and that I got my car back.
Here's my question for the second-guessers out there:
"With all that I've been going through these last sixteen months, how would you feel if this carjacker had gone on and shot and killed me?
"Who would you turn to next to dump on? HUH?"
Like the overwhelming majority of Americans right now, I've got last Friday's massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT on my mind.
It's the first time ever that kindergarten children lost their lives at the hands of a mass murderer in an American place of learning.
This time, along with six adults, twenty children- many six years old, the others seven- were killed.
It's been 37 years since the first time a school shooting taking place here in the United States (it happened in Alaska in 1975) grabbed headlines.
And yes, back then, we were discussing whether or not America's gun-control laws ought to be strengthened.
Since 1975, busloads- planeloads- of people here in this country have been killed by mass murderers...especially at this country's schoolyards and shopping malls.
And every time it happens, we keep asking: "Why?"
We KNOW the reason it keeps taking place.
It's that we sure love those guns here in America. (I mean, the love of guns WAS a founding principle. We didn't break off from England by just talking it out.)
Speaking of England...in 1996, a 43-year-old man invaded an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and picked off sixteen kindergartners and their teacher. Then he pulled the trigger one more time and bumped himself off.
In time, the British government conducted an investigation...and the inquiry led to laws that ended legal private ownership of handguns in Rob Pattinson's native country.
America's lawmakers don't have the guts to come up with anything close to that kind of a law.
What's more, way too many of the people in Washington are TOO DOGGONE CHICKEN to discuss any of this with the National Rifle Association...much less stand up to the NRA itself.
Well, I'm glad to find out US Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) wants to have that talk with NRA officials. (And Manchin admits he's a gun lover.)
It's long been time for lawmakers to have that long, long overdue talk with the gun lobby. And while this country's senators and representatives are at it, they need to also invite officials from the nation's big media companies. (After all, the Adam Lanzas, Allen Muhammads, Jared Loughners, and Robert Hawkinses couldn't enact their sprees if they didn't, at one time or another, see examples on TV or at some neighborhood movieplex.)
And invite rank-and-file citizens, too, by all means...because the experience in each community- urban, suburban, rural- is different in one way or another.
Let's strengthen the gun laws we've already got. Let's make it harder for people to get them. (After all, state after state just got through pushing legislation making it harder to vote- even if that legislation basically backfired!)
You mean to tell me we can't find a place of common ground here in America when it comes to gun control?
