We Slept Through All of the Excitement

Normally, not very much goes on in our neighborhood, and we’re very happy with that state of affairs.  We live at the end of a fairly quiet dead end street.  With one notable exception, most of our immediate neighbors are fairly quiet.  Most of the people on our block have been here for a long time, we know each other, and we tend to look out for each other.  I don’t think I’d describe anyone as especially nosey, but we all tend to notice if there’s a strange car or something unusual going on.  I know some of you probably think that sounds awful, but we’re very happy with it.  Maybe it’s a southern thing. 

Last night was apparently one of the exceptions to the “not much goes on in our neighborhood” statement.  Nick and I went to bed fairly early.  He has to get up at 5:30 in the morning for work, and I get up around 6:15 for work, so we’re usually in bed well before 10:00 most week nights.  We’ve also taken to silencing both of our cellphones before bed, which we did last night. 

This morning we woke up to various missed calls and texts from two different neighbors.  After texting different neighbors this morning, I found out about all of the excitement that we slept through. 

Apparently when our next door neighbor, Steve, came home from work last night (he works odd hours, so is typically coming home much later than the rest of us) he smelled natural gas and called the gas company.  His wife, Lori, sent us a text letting us know that the gas company was coming. 

The gas company sent one person who walked around the yards with a flashlight.  Deana, another neighbor a couple of houses down, saw a man outside our house with a flashlight.  She called us, but neither of us answered, and no lights came on.  She saw our cars, so assumed we were both home, so her next call was to the police. 

Meanwhile, Steve went outside to talk to the man from the gas company, who told him that there was a leak, and a crew was on the way to fix it.  While Steve was outside, he saw that Deana was definitely awake and about, so walked down the street to talk to her and let her know about the gas leak.  Deana was still on the phone with the police when Steve arrived, so she was able to assure them that all was well before anyone made it to our street to check on things. 

Lori then sent us a text that the gas company was sending a crew to fix the leak, and that’s what it would be if we heard any large trucks coming down the street.  She told me today that they did come and fix the leak last night.

We slept through all of it.  I’m not sure how, especially since the dogs were in the bedroom and usually bark at pretty much everything.  Maybe they were just really tired, and so were we.  Somehow we slept through all of last night’s excitement.

Of course we were very happy that Steve noticed the gas leak and called about it, and we were very happy that Deana cared enough to call the police when it looked like something was wrong at our house.  Like I told her, I’d much rather have a neighbor who calls the police when it turns out that nothing was wrong than one who doesn’t call anyone when something is wrong. 

With any luck, that will be all of the excitement our little section of the street has for a while.  Even if we did sleep through it.

So what about you?  Have you had any excitement in your neighborhood lately?  Or do you sleep through it too?