The Urban Island

Tonight, after a lovely evening at the Denver symphony listening to the musicians in costume belt out various thematic versions of the Batman score and my daughter whispering loudly every five minutes how she wanted to go home (and those around us also sharing the same wish), we headed out to my friend's Volvo for the drive back to our island. Conversation ensued as it normally does about who is doing what where and what the plans were for the weekend. Ariel and Belle are blasting on the stereo to a chorus of 4 year vocalists in the back seat. We whisk through the streets of downtown Denver as we normally do except at this late hour, a couple of whines emerge about wanting to get home, being thirsty and overall 4 year complaining.

As we get closer to the island however, the mood becomes more tense than normal. It is as if everyone in the car senses it and anxieties climb at a feverish pace. Eyes are darting behind and to the sides. As we sit at a stoplight with the car next to us gunning its engine, fears increase. The whines turn to loud cries in the back seat with the Disney Princess orchestra turned higher to drown the noise but instead only intensifies the mood. I sit and laugh nervously at the situation as that is my reaction to our circumstance. "He would be stupid to do it again. There are too many police. Too predictable."

Within 24 hours, we had lost our innocent, naivete about living in the city. We had in a sense "arrived" to our fate. We could no longer buy into our fairy tale that we lived in a bubble; that had been popped and our eyes were open fully to the fact that our Pleasantville is bordered by several lower socio-economic areas (I decided to be PC as that is not what I originally wrote but you can use your imagination). Some guy in the Rocky Mountain News made a comment about it, "It was bound to happen sometime" I mean really, did we honestly think we were in Highlands Ranch? We bought into the philosophy of our Pleasantville; a suburb in the city. We paid city prices for suburb homes to live close to all that Denver has to offer. We just closed our eyes to the fact that, no really, we did buy into ALL that Denver has to offer.

ALL means all. All means two shootings in three days. All means appliances stolen from a new home that was to close today. "All" means that the invisible shock fence which can recognize and zap urban unpleasantness and that surrounds our perimeter that we had created as reality in our minds DOES NOT exist. Damn. Too many of us watched or read The Secret. We actually thought that that if we built an image of a community that can exist within a city, reap all of the positive attributes of urban living, and have an imaginary masked crusader who protected our Gotham invisibly to shield us from any urban issues that it would be REAL. Hey, I am all for the Law of Attraction - I believe in it. But, there has to be some reality check here. And, you better have a lot of Secret worshipers chanting and fantasizing every night if you want that invisible fence to materialize.

Luckily, the two people shot are ok. Well, they are alive. One has a bullet lodged in her shoulder; the other was shot in the wrist and it wasn't clear from the reports what permanent damage will ensure. They are in our prayers. The red bandana'd psycho is still on the loose. And the parks, front porches and Internet waves are being overloaded with whisperings about how this could happen and how scary it is. People are locking their doors and closing their garages. Cynics are declaring that "they" knew it was bound to happen and questioning what those "Stapleton people" were thinking buying into a community like that.

But my guess is they were thinking just what we were. Despite all the issues that could arise, it still seemed like a good bet. And, now that the odds have changed and the table has turned cold towards a guaranteed "21", will we be packing up and getting the heck out of dodge for the "Burbs"?

Heck, no. We will just do what every other urbanite who has walked before us has done. Shed our innocence, band together and kick the S%*T out of anyone who messes with our turf :) Well, not literally. But you would be amazed out just how effective hundreds of engaged hormonal women (did I fail to mention that we have three hundred four year olds in our neighborhood most of whom have or will have a younger sibling in the next few years - that is a lot of women with some serious raging hormones) can be at fighting against just about everything!

And, likely, we will still maintain our image of the island. However, we will probably be a bit more realistic about the possibilities of urban hurricanes, tsunamis and those pesky mosquitos!

UPDATE: One more carjacking and the first fatality that was a drug deal gone bad occurred Thursday evening after I made this post. It appears unrelated to the previous two. The "Moms" are burning up the airwaves and you can almost feel the energy that can result when tragedies begin to synthesize a coming together of a community in its aftermath. Prayers go out to the family of Thursday night's victim. Halloween appears to have passed with only laughs, candy consumption and pure joy among our neighborhoods' smallest residents. Thanks to the Denver PD for stepping up security.