Well, if you throw a rock, you hit the ghetto.

I left my children in the very capable hands of alittleredhoodthis morning, blithely going along my merry way, never thinking about all the awful things that can and do happen on a daily basis.

There are no words for the level of fear that a mother has when she turns onto her street and sees two police cars parked in front of her house.  There aren't adjectives big enough for the panic that ensues when she sees a uniformed police officer standing and talking to the babysitter.  There isn't a way to describe the rush of relief that overwhelms her when she counts one, two, three people that she loves all safe and accounted for, apparently unharmed on the front porch.  Words fail, folks.  

Apparently, someone in our neighborhood heard a gunshot and called the police.  They responded to the call and saw my children playing on the front porch, and decided to stop and ask if the kids heard anything.  It wasn't determined if it was indeed a gunshot or perhaps a clap of thunder.  It wouldn't surprise me if it had been a gunshot.  We live in a very old neighborhood.  In the forties, my street was where the rich folks lived.  By today's standards it's mostly smallish older homes interspersed with the odd crack house.  If you stray too far to the north, you run into a neighborhood that you don't want to be in by yourself after dark.  Between the gunshots and the registered sex offender four doors down, we cannot move soon enough.