Near Miss

One of the blogs that I read regularly "Just Eat Your Cupcake" written by Maria tells a story of how she narrowly missed being grabbed by a frightening potential predator when she was a child. She asked if any of us had had similar experiences. And you know, I had almost forgotten about what happened to me. I was older, being 16 at the time, but it was still scary.

I grew up in a modest little 3 bedroom house (with 1 bathroom!!! How did we manage?) in a quiet little neighborhood with similar houses lining the streets. Our house had the best thing in the world to us, as children, though. It was directly across the street from the coolest park. The park had a big baseball field, a picnic shelter, and an old-fashioned REAL playground full of solid, metal equipment. A HUGE metal slide that would burn your cheeks in the summer. And it was so tall that it would make you somewhat dizzy at the top. It had 2 giant see saws (teeter totters) that had heavy wooden seats, and more than once I fell off and had this thing come down on the top of my head. We survived many playground injuries but never anything serious. There were some swings, and a large arched set of monkey bars. None of that pansy "safe" equipment. That came later, about the time that my kids were born. They tore down the cool stuff and put in one of those soft surfaced, wooden structures that was almost ok for really young kids, except that the slides were short and plastic. Anyone older than 5 would probably find it boring.
Sad....

Probably 90 percent of my childhood memories of playing outdoors were at the park. Mom could see the playground from the front windows of our house, although we spent quite a bit of time further back, beyond the playground where there was a heavily wooded area with a shallow creek. What is it about a small sliver of running water that is so fascinating to children? We loved it back there, but more often than not, Mom would come looking for us, reminding us that we were supposed to stay on the playground where she could see us. We pouted, but we dragged ourselves back. Until next time...LOL.

Anyway, the summer that I was 16 my Mom was working a lot during the day. That left my sister and I pretty much alone, usually with a list of "chores" that we ignored as much as we could until about 30 minutes before Mom was due home. Then we would jump into action and do a slipshod job of whatever was on the list. There were rules, too. No BOYS allowed in the house when parents were not at home. Bruce and I were already dating by then, and it was summer so we wanted to see each other and hang out. I didn't want to get in trouble, so sometimes we would hang out at the park. The park wasn't off limits, and we weren't IN the house. I mean, if I hung out at the park and he just happened to be there....? Right? A clever bending of the rules.

So, this one day, after spending most of the morning lying out in the backyard to work on my tan, I threw some shorts and a tshirt over my bikini and headed over to the park to meet Bruce. It was the middle of the day, and it was hot and the park was empty. I sat on one of the swings and waited. All of a sudden some movement caught my eye. It was a young man, probably mid-20ish, and I didn't recognize him. This was a neighborhood park and the only time strangers were around was during the baseball games. This guy was strolling up out of the woods from the direction of the creek. I kept swinging but I was watching him, hoping he would head towards the road and keep going. I kept one eye on him and the other on the parking lot, hoping that Bruce would pull up in his little brown volkswagen Rabbit at any moment.

Much to my disappointment this guy headed straight for me, on the swings. He was unkempt and seemed kind of jumpy or nervous. I got a bad vibe from him, and was almost visibly cringing when he leaned up again the leg of the swing set and tried to start up a conversation. I don't remember exactly what all he said. It was awkward and creepy. The parts that I do remember was he licked his lips and looked at me really funny and inquired as to what I was wearing under that tshirt, so I told him my bathing suit. He asked if it was a bikini. He particularly wanted to know if it was a "skimpy" bikini. I really started getting nervous, because even I, a naive 16 year old sensed that the conversation was getting really inappropriate. I also remember that he asked me if I was alone, or if I was waiting on someone. When I told him I was waiting on Bruce, he asked if my boyfriend was "BIG"...?? Thats when I made a stupid excuse and took off in an almost run back to my house. I was shaking when I went in. I told my sister what had happened, and then we both got scared when I realized he could see what house I was going into. Mom was at work, we were alone, and even though we always enjoyed having our days to ourselves, suddenly it was scary. We locked the doors, and looked out the front windows, but the guy was gone.
He had taken off, apparently on foot, and we had no idea in which direction.

I don't remember if Bruce ever showed up or not. I don't think I ever told my mother about that incident. I am pretty sure that I never hung out at the park all alone again though. While nothing technically "happened", there was such a strong freaky vibe of wrongness about that guy. And now that I am older, and wiser, it really frightens me how close I might have been to being abducted, or raped, or who knows what. Not long after that, probably a month or so, a young woman in her early 20's was found in the early hours of a Sunday morning lying dead by the edge of the picnic shelter just a few yards from the playground. One of my neighbors walking his dog found her. She had been bludgeoned to death, and the police decided that it was "drug-related".

And this part is creepy, but as teenagers who had never really had any experience with death, my sister, my best friend and I went over to the park that Sunday afternoon, after all of the investigations were over and looked over the whole scene with a sense of strange fascination and different eyes. It was no longer the fun, innocent playground of our childhood. It was more sinister and frightening now. I can recall that on the edge of the concrete floor of the shelter were huge puddles of dark, maroon colored blood. There were more puddles in the grass just beyond that. The 3 of us just stood there and solemnly stared at those puddles just trying to comprehend that only hours before a young woman lost her life. And the killer was never apprehended. Even then, the thought of that creepy man popped into my head......what if? Who knows.