Last night I was in the back of the house playing with Moe while Seth was at the grocery store when I heard a blood curdling scream and a woman yell, “Oh my God, no! Someone please help me!”

At first I thought it was a television.  But it was so realistic and there was no music after.  That is my tip off that something is real, no music.

I grabbed Moe but thought, “Wait, if there is a gun out there, or someone is dead, I don’t want Moe to see it, but I can’t just leave him back here alone because if there is a gunman on the loose what if they come through the dog door.”  So I grabbed Moe walked quickly up to the front door and peeked through our peep door.  (We don’t have a peep hole we have a little door that you have to open and I’m always nervous when I open it half expecting someone with a gun to just shoot me in the face.) The woman was now shrieking, “Oh my god, why?  My baby!  The baby!”  And I instantly went from gun to car accident.  People on our street drive too fast.  It’s a very pedestrian oriented neighborhood, lots of temples and people walking to and from them in dark clothes and sometimes they just hang out in the middle of the street talking.  It makes me crazy.

I opened the door and saw Fred, our neighbor across the street and another man, talking to a woman standing on the sidewalk and everyone was looking down.  The man I don’t know was on the phone with 911.  Our other neighbor Carol, a 96 year old woman, had fallen.  She fell and hit her head on the curb.  She was unconscious and her caretaker was somehow involved in the fall, and had her young daughter in the car.  It was all very confusing, but I breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t a gun and it wasn’t a dead baby in the middle of the street.  It was poor Carol.

I got a queasy feeling in my stomach.  My mom’s name was Carol.  Moses’ middle is Carol.  I, for a split second, wondered if I should change Moe’s middle name because the name Carol was somehow cursed.  This is obviously ridiculous, because how could a 96 year old woman falling be somehow a sign of a cursed name?

Anyway, I know a name can’t be cursed and I hope neighbor lady Carol is OK.  But why couldn’t her name be like, Sylvia or Ethel, Judy, anything?