Fearful Weekend

This weekend was not a great one.

In living in Oklahoma, we have experienced a handful of terrible happenings at our house. We've been egged, had our mailbox smashed, had our cars broken into and our doors jiggled (thankfully, they were locked). We don't exactly feel safe in our house or in this creepy small town.

On Saturday night, we came home from a day of shopping in Tulsa around 10pm. We watched SNL and went to bed. At 2:30 in the morning, we heard a loud bang that sounded like someone was breaking into the house. I was scared, and Bryan was nervous. We both sat awake listening for where in the house the noise was coming from. After a minute of silence, Bryan bravely walked through the house, turning on lights and checking for intruders.

He was unable to find anyone in the house, re-checked our locks and we went back to bed.

At 3:40 in the morning, I received a call from an unknown number. Being that I was already scared and that I never answer unknown calls, I let it go to voicemail. When I received a notification that I had received a voicemail, I listened to it. And immediately started crying for fear.

The message was the most disgusting thing I've ever heard. Vulgar. Sexual. Violent. Disgusting. And it mentioned me by name and described the inappropriate things the caller wanted to do to me while my friend watched. I was unable to discern the voice of the caller because the caller had used some sort of computer to scramble his voice.

I made Bryan listen to it, and he was freaked out as well. At this point, we're unable to sleep, and we realize that the two events must be related. How terrifying that someone who knows where I live, my phone number, my friend's name and that I used to work at the library. And that they actually came to my house. I couldn't sleep. I was scared shitless.

Eventually, we woke up, watched tv and made lunch, avoiding the conversation. Bryan went outside to check the perimeter of the house and found the most disgusting graffiti on our front porch, in line with what the phone call described.

Bryan snapped into protection mode. He was going to figure out who did it, and if he didn't, he was going to call the police like we did for everything else unsafe that happened to us in our Oklahoma house. He hugged me and assured me that he would fix this.

We narrowed it down to a group of people that I'm embarrassed to say: our own improv team. Who we host at our house every month to review shows and provide with a free, home-cooked meal. Who call me if they will be late to practice. Who know where I work. Bryan was furious. And I felt threatened.

We decided to bring it up at the top of practice in front of the entire team to see if anyone would confess. When Bryan began his speech, I never felt more protected before in my life. When I was in college, something awful happened to me and no one was there to protect me. And this weekend, Bryan was there to protect me.

He firmly, loudly and passionately described how we already feel unsafe in this town, that we already feel threatened in our own home, and that last night, we had two unusual things happen. He described the noise, the graffiti and the sickening phone call.

He gave them the opportunity to confess. One raised his hand. A student. A new member of the team. Bryan took him back to his office and I, through tears, explained how upset I was and that today's practice would be a team effort. We began choosing games for Friday's show.

About fifteen minutes later, Bryan called me into the hallway where the student apologized profusely, terrified of Bryan and upset for how he'd disrespected me. He said he was working alone. Bryan told him to immediately go clean up the graffiti and that he was suspended from the team until further notice.

We continued with practice knowing that one or two more students were involved. After warmups, we began practicing games for the show. After the first game, Bryan disappeared with another student who said he needed to talk to Bryan. This student confessed as well and said there was one more person who was involved. This student cried and was also suspended.

Practice continued, and we left. We were so sick that our own students would do this. Student on faculty/staff sexual harassment. I'm not sure how to feel about these students or the one who is letting his friends take the blame.

Later, when we finally got hungry for dinner around 8:30, Bryan wanted to get pizza and I went with him. Neither of us are okay with me being alone at the house anymore, even though it seems we may have resolved the issue.

This comes at a really terrible time because I was starting to like my stupid small town again, to feel like it was beginning to feel like home. And now I'm so disgusted, so unnerved that I am really hoping that Bryan gets a call later this month from one of those schools so we can get out of here.