Catching up, part 2 -- Jay goes 'Superhero'

In part 1, Paxton got stitches after bailing sideways off a slide and landing on his head, on a pile of rocks, in true Murphy style. So much for a Saturday at the park. It's now Monday, less than 48 hours after The Fall. It hasn't been two days since Paxton was dosed with a hallucinogen and laced up with five neat, pretty little stitches but Jay and I have to take him to his pediatrician to get his stitches checked. Everything looked great & we set an appointment to come back on Friday to get them taken out. He was a real champ, considering.

On the way home we pulled into McDonald's to treat Little Man to a burger and fries and were greeted by a lovely breakfast menu. Really, Ronald? Is it that hard to make burgers and egg mcmuffins, simultaneously? Don't you think your patrons would approve of breakfast and lunch 24 hours a day?? We ordered him pancakes instead and since we were close, we went to the Chicken Park. It's a small park with an amphitheatre and playground in the middle of downtown old Fair Oaks -- Fair Oaks Village, a totally cool, old timey little part of town that reminds me of Oregon -- and chickens. Lots of real-live, WILD chickens. Most of the ones you see are roosters and they can get HUMONGOUS. The kids love it and we enjoy it too.

After Paxton played and fed the chickens some pancakes and played some more, we got back on the road. Jay's brakes were squeaking in the truck so he wanted to stop by AutoZone to get some new pads and if it weren't for that last-minute to-do being put on the list, we wouldn't have been at that particular intersection, at this particular time. We wouldn't have seen the accident that sent one car across two others and put the other up on the little curb of a median. We never would have seen the kid hop out of the Camaro up on the median and take off on foot, running right out of his shoes.

And Jay never would have had the chance to go into full-blown Superhero mode.

Instantly, he's on the move, jumping the median the guy's Camaro is stuck on, darting through a parking lot and into an apartment complex. Right on the guys ass. He heard us coming and went from safely jogging, not looking very suspicious to sprinting like he just crashed a stolen car. And bailed over a wall, into someone's backyard.

Jay threw the truck in park and went after him. I barely had time to yell, "Don't get hurt!" and it was probably more of a mumble. I called 9-1-1 and got in the passenger seat. I kinda sat there for a minute, talking to the operator but when she asked if i could still see them, I knew I had to go find them. I drove back by the scene to give the operator the plate number on the Camaro then headed to find Jay.

He was blocks from where he'd left me, standing on the side of the road. With another guy. A guy that looked just like the guy running from the Camaro. Then I saw the car in front of me. Saw it braking and pulling over. Watched this guy Jay had caught up to and detained get into another car and speed away. The guy had to have seen me in the truck, had to have recognized that giant beast because by the time Jay was in the driver's seat, they were gone. I'm smart though and I know which way I would go (almost) if it'd had been me running. It also helps that the street I found them on is on I drive almost every day because it's right behind our house. I told Jay to go down Hilltop, the street we live off of. We didn't see them until we got to our driveway and there they were, at the bottom of our hill, turning back towards the accident scene (that's where my escape plan and his, differ. No way in HELL would I go anywhere near that ish).

Jay caught up to the getaway car and asked the guy if he was going back. He said he was but when we passed by the accident, Jay shouted to the one and only cop at the scene that the guy was in the car next to us, pointing it out, yelling make & model. We pulled over into a parking lot right across from everything and watched the cop pull this guy out of the car at gunpoint, throw him down on the ground and put him in cuffs. Jay was crossing the street to talk to the cops when the crowd of people that had gathered saw the guy in cuffs and then saw Jay with his white truck across the street and erupted in cheers.

The cops didn't take Jay's name or any sort of information which kind of cheeses me off. I mean, he totally deserves some kind of award or medal or prize or something. That shit was insane and not a lot of people would have gone to all that trouble when they were only witnesses; I'm not sure they really understood the lengths he went to to catch this guy. The lady in the other car thanked Jay, told him she really appreciated what he'd done and that she was fine, not hurt at all. He got back in the truck and three of us went home. Paxton went down for a nap and we sat down to digest the days' happenings.

At the scene, when the guy was cuffed, waiting for Jay, I talked with a couple kids who watched the whole thing unfold. One said he'd never do anything like what we'd done and the opportunity to help humanity evolve presented itself to me: If everyone goes around thinking everything is everyone else's problem, we're all lost. If ONE PERSON among us stops to help another, maybe that person will stop to help someone else and that person will help one more. And that's the power of one person. The power of doing what's right, when you see something that's wrong. 'I'm a mom', I said. 'If that were my kid, I would want someone to do something. This didn't just happen. This has been happening and no one has ever told his kid, "No. Don't do that. That's WRONG."'

If just one person, one dad, one mom, a sister, someone's cousin -- JUST ONE PERSON -- steps up to play the superhero, our world would be a better, safer place. I think there's superhero in all of us. Don't be scared. Pull up your tights. Throw back your cape (totally optional) and GO DO GOOD.