A scary world

* Apparently they now think that college student who disappeared in Virginia may have been the victim of a serial killer, who may or may not have been caught. (Apparently there were five missing-persons cases from that area in the past however many years)

* Apparently a real estate agent in Arkansas got killed as she was going to show a house (Which I think was also an episode of Criminal Minds once). I don't know if they have anyone in custody yet.

* And of course, the biggie locally: someone beheaded someone else at a Moore, OK food-processing plant, and was apparently going to do it again but an off-duty sheriff's deputy stopped him using force.  And the suspect is originally from Idabel. (And yes, there may be more issues involved here)

I don't know. Stuff like that, heard on the radio first thing in the morning, kind of make me not want to leave the house. (Oh, my neighborhood is FAIRLY safe, despite random people-who-are-probably-burglary-perps running through my yard). But it does make me rather paranoid and overcautious:

- a woman showed up at my door Sunday with a small dog in tow, looking for "Missy" who had lost the dog. I kept my glass storm door locked and informed her that I did not really know Missy and didn't know where she was. While in this case it was almost entirely likely that her story was true (there was, I think, a Missy who lived in the house south of me - until they abruptly moved out a couple days ago*)

(* I can suspect part of the story behind that based on some gossip conveyed my by my air conditioning dude earlier in the summer. And if it's correct, it's not a happy story).

Then again, the "lost dog ploy" is a common way people gain entry to a house, by abusing someone else's trust and desire to help.

- I always, always keep both my big front door and my storm door locked when I am at home. As I've said before: if someone's gonna burgle my house, I prefer they do it while I am OUT to while I am AT HOME. (Of course, I vastly prefer my house NOT be burgled, but we live in a fallen world, so you can't count on that).

(I do leave the storm door unlocked when I'm away, because the postal people and UPS can then place small packages between the storm door and front door, where they are protected from rain and also from prying eyes of would-be package thieves. Though I'm guessing someone who boosted a package from my doorstep would be deeply disappointed; my most recent purchase I'm waiting on is a book of Handel's keyboard pieces.)

- When I come in here early in the morning, if I'm the only one, I don't unlock the exterior door, preferring to be the person alone in a locked building (especially since this building is somewhat distant from the rest of campus).

But I see stories like that and I think: Well, maybe going to Spiro Mounds all alone over mid-fall break isn't such a hot idea. Or I twitch every time a student gets a bit angry in class, remembering all the times in recent years that's broken bad. (I've told the story about the student who was escorted off my dad's campus - and served with a restraining order - after making death threats on the chem prof whose class he failed).

But the thing is, I hate feeling like that. Not helping someone trying to return a lost dog, just because they MIGHT have an accomplice who forces themself into my house when I open the door. We're called to love and trust our neighbors, and I have a really hard time figuring out the compromise between my own self-protection and helping other people. And I admit, I tend to fall on the side of being overly cautious most of the time - but you hear such bizarre awful stories, and while they may only happen one time out of a thousand, still, how are you to know you're not going to become that one?

I don't know. That's one of the kind of awful things about paying attention to the news - you do get kind of paranoid and instead of stepping outside your house to talk to the lady with the dog, you stay behind the glass pane of your storm door. And it feels very unwelcoming and rude to me - but at the same time, I'm a single woman who lives alone, I don't have anyone I could easily call on for help. And I admit, this is the kind of stuff that I wonder if I'll be called on to explain at the entryway to The Great Beyond - why DIDN'T you step out onto your porch to talk to that woman, instead of acting like you were a gas-station cashier in a high-crime area and staying hidden behind plate glass? Why DIDN'T you stop and help that person on the highway? And I don't know how you balance it, your own safety vs. helping people who genuinely need it. I can't always go by "feels hinky to me," there have been situations that didn't set off my radar that wound up being dangerous, and others, where every fiber in me was saying "RUN! Run away NOW" that turned out to be innocuous.