There's nothing as distinct as the sound of glass breaking. Whether it's that "fragile" gift telling you its story of rough shipment, or a vase crashing to the tile floor followed by a scream a nanosecond later, or a baseball breaking a car window, triggering the car alarm, you know that sound, and nothing good will come of it. We heard it last night at 10:45, just after we were dropping off to sleep. It took only a few seconds to determine the cause: a brick thrown through our dining room window.
We live in a suburb of Houston, a nice area, brick homes, neatly manicured lawns, plenty of trees geometrically arrayed to make one forget that, back in the day, this land was forest and farm. It's not that we're immune to crime. The nightly news reports increases in home invasions, burglaries, and theft of anything with copper in it - even if there's still electricity coursing through it. The Darwin Awards folks may have to set up a satellite office in Texas to review the many cases of injury and death from copper theft.
But... I digress. Between the brick and the broken glass and the height of the break and the fact that the brick needed to clear a privacy fence and traverse the gap between two trees, this appeared to be the work of someone with more height and strength than a child.
We called the cops, and soon a prototypical young, overweight officer showed up, asked a few questions - including whether we or any neighbors had security cameras (some do), whether we knew of anyone with reason to target us specifically (we didn't) - and left us his card as he was called to a burglary in progress a few miles closer to the city. That area, he noted, had a lot of that sort of crime. Here, not so much. His thought was that this brick might have been targeted to someone else, and the perpetrator got the wrong house. There are plenty of brick houses on the corner here, all quite similar in design.
Yeah. That must be it. A targeted act, with the wrong target. Either that, or a random act. Neither one of these possibilities answered my question: what's gained by an act like this? I can understand someone commiting a burglary, purse-snatching, car-jacking, or other crime that nets them money. I'm way less sympathetic to possible reasons for personal assaults, but they're happening with increasing frequency. Plenty of people are also caught in the cross-fire of drive-by shootings.
Just not in "my" neighborhood. I can see now that I've become your insulated suburbanite, imagining that my homeowners' association fees somehow provided me with protection from the seeping darkness of criminal activity.
I lay awake, going through every possibility that somehow, something I'd done, someone I'd pissed off might have triggered this event. I'm on good terms with my neighbors next door and across the street. I've never called the cops on anyone. I pay all my bills early and in full. I treat all the folks I encounter with a smile and get the same in return. I didn't post any political signs that could have angered anyone.
Maybe it was just random. Bricks are readily available; spare time and darkness too. Maybe it's a sign; maybe I'm reading way too much into it. Maybe local window contractors are having a slow season. Who knows? But I do know this: that brick shattered more than my window.