Really Scary Event

This morning I woke up early and went to work. I left around 3:50 am and got a call from my wife as I was exiting the freeway 42 miles away.

She asks me something, and is whispering so I can’t understand her. She then speaks louder and says where are you? I tell her I’m almost at work, and she says I think somebody is breaking into the house. She said, I heard loud noises and it sounded like glass breaking, and then when we are talking, I hear another loud noise.

I tell her to call 911 I coming home.

I can’t tell you how scary that is and I’m driving 80-100 while it is still raining. I call back and she isn’t answering. I then call our home number, yes we still have one, I can’t get mama convinced to get rid of it. I know the answering machine plays loudly whatever is said, so I yell, get out if our house the police are on the way, blah blah blah. And a few other choice things.

Try calling my wife a couple more times with no answer. Then decide to text and I’m doing voice to text so some of it is garbled on her end. But she tells me the police are on the way and they want to know what I’m driving, I’m thinking it is because they are letting the CHP know there is some idiot driving fast southbound on I-5, so I pickup the speed some.

They police finally show up when I’m about 4 miles from home and have my wife walk out and open the door and blind her with a big light. They come in, look around, and this large painting that’s probably 4 ft by 6-7 ft fell down from the wall where the ceilings are 18 ft high so it dropped quite aways and landed on a glass table. Then it knocked a vase off that table.

I think the picture falling is what she heard and called me and then the vase must have been wobbling and it finally crashed to the ground which is what I heard when we were talking.

Part way into the drive, when I couldn’t reach her, and started thinking what was happening to her, I was crying like a baby. It is such a hopeless feeling.

I can’t actually remember being this scared before in my life.

I need to research it later, but with this storm, I think the drywall on that wall might have gotten moist and the nails with the picture hangers loosened, allowing the painting to fall. I could see there weren’t large nails into studs.

I’m generally pretty good at letting stress roll off me and not worrying about what could go wrong. But in this case I wasn’t, and I still feel the stress throughout me. It’s really weird how I’m processing this and how horrible I felt thinking I might lose her.

 

Not a police officer on the planet could stop me if I got that call from home. Glad it was just a falling painting and not something more dangerous and unpredictable.

 

Glad it wasn’t an actual break in and only nerves were shaken. Now, who hung that danged picture.

 

Glad it was only a painting. My best friend had a break-in a couple weeks ago when he was out of town on business, fortunately no one else was home at the time. 3 little teenage shitheads (one with a pistol in hand) broke into his house and walked out with just 2 things....the keys to his BMW in the driveway and his PS5. Quiet and fairly safe neighborhood too.

 

I totally understand what you went through. 3 years ago when my son was living in Pennsylvania we got a call from his girlfriend that he was stung by a wasp and was currently in an ambulance unable to breath because his throat had swollen shut. Here I am 600 miles away and this is the only info I got. Then we couldn't get hold of her for another hour. Mentally I had checked out with emotion. Ends up that he could breath and they gave him high powered Benedryl and everything was fine. But that one hour was one of the toughest in my life.

 

That's actually scarier than your wife calling and telling you that she's in an active shooter situation.

At least I knew she was in the back room of a store and armed. Someone actually IN the house is a whole nother level.

Glad it was nothing nefarious!

 

rich people problems

 

Glad you're alright.
So how's the painting, my brother was a art dealer.

 

glad it turned out ok...i can only imagine how that felt.

 

Really glad it was nothing serious. I know the exact feeling you were dealing with, except for a much shorter time frame. I can't imagine being that far from home and going through that for that long.

Can I offer some advice? If not, feel free to stop reading here.

Use this. Reflect on it. If this had been real, did things play out the way you wanted? Like I said, I've been through a very similar situation. Thought my family was in imminent danger, only to find out it was nothing serious but at the time had me in complete panic mode, even hours after the fact. And one thing I realized was the things I had done to prepare myself and my family for such a situation had deficiencies. For example, I always thought "I know my house better than anyone and there's enough ambient moon/start/street lights through the windows, I don't need a flashlight and no need to give away my position to a potential intruder." Then while trying to clear my house at night, adrenaline pumping, full on fight or flight mode, I realized just how many dark corners, nooks and crannies, etc. there were that I could not see as well as I wanted in that situation. I reflected on that and remedied the situation for the future, among a few other things.

Point is, what about this scenario made you feel out of control? And what could you do to fix it for next time (which hopefully never actually comes).

 

OP, Did @cortez some how hack into your WERA account?

 

The best thing we ever did was put an alarm system with exterior cameras on our house 20 years ago. We have had no issues and I think part of that is letting everyone know that there are cameras on every inch of our house and yard. Of course having two Mastiffs helps also I am sure.

I feel at ease when I have to leave at 1 AM for work knowing that I can set all exterior alarms and leave the interior and motion detectors off. The alarm has cell service of it's own and battery backup so it is reassuring to know that it is there. I just have to remember to leave a note so that when my Sweetie lets the dogs out in the morning half asleep she doesn't set the alarm off

 

There is something seriously wrong with you.

 

"Alarms really secured our house. It may have also helped a little having LITERAL FUCKING TANKS staged with turret coverage of every square inch of the property. But the exterior cameras on the house were what definitely solidified our home security."

 

Glad everything that matters is OK (f the painting). Bet the cops were happy also. A legitimate concern with no one hurt, I suspect they get some that are the other way. Put your feet up, stay home and hug the wife. Make her feel good and you also.

 

That sucks to have that gutted feeling. I was in Florida on a work trip, had a major delay that put me on an overnight flight, but that is a different story. I was just tired and waking up to my phone going off with my wife calling me stating she just saw someone peering into our windows. Her, the dogs and a 3 year old, and I am over 2,000 miles away. Helpless is an understatement. Needless to say, she called the cops and grabbed one of my golf clubs, of all things.

 

I'm glad that's all that was. Were the cops annoyed, or were they cool about it?

 

Glad it was a false alarm. Do you have any kind of protection around the house? There's always a pistol just a few feet from our bed, hopefully the wife will remember it's there.

 

California is a very bad and dangerous place. He should have trained his wife on protecting herself long ago instead of dialing 911 and waiting for 30 minutes for the cops to arrive if they are even able to. This should be a wake-up call since it appears they are unprepared and next time it might not be a big fancy picture falling down in his fourier. The wife and I go to the range 1-2x a month to keep our skills up. Alarms and cameras are also a good idea. It's not the 1930's anymore.