Peeps

This morning there was a high speed chase through our neighborhood. I'm not sure what crime brought it about. All I know is when I looked out the window there was an unmarked car in hot pursuit of some little honda or toyota or whatever it was. I hate it when they do that.

We used to live in this quiet little culdesac. Although it was still a HUD neighborhood, it was a nice little HUD. With only a few houses and a dead end street there really wasn't anywhere to drive fast to. But with housing the way it is on the rez, the tribe needed to build more houses so they opened up our street and built more houses up on the hill. That marked the end of our nice little dead end street.

It didn't take long after the housing boom before someone got hurt - Stupid Doug. Stupid Doug was our puppy. He was hit by someone who was obviously driving too fast for a residential area. After wiping the tears from my kids eyes, I voiced my concern to the Tribal Council and asked them to put speed bumps in. They nodded and listened, but the speed bumps didn't arrive.

At least not soon enough. The next victim was Fonzy. Although he wasn't exactly my dog (he belonged to my sister), he found out he could hang out at my house and eat. I imagine that's what he was on his way to doing when he got ran over. This time there were a lot of witnesses, all of them neighborhood kids. Again, I asked the Tribal Council to put speed bumps on our road before one of the kids got hurt. This time they responded, but it didn't seem to be enough.

Last summer the unspeakable happened. Peeps was ran over by someone driving way too fast on their way to do something important I suppose. Peeps is nine years old, and he was doing what you would expect any boy his age to be doing - riding his bike in front of his house.... yards from his mom and dad.

You could hear the whole reservation's heart break when they life-flighted him to the hospital, and then to Seattle for intensive surgery to heal his broken body. After months of more surgery, physical therapy, and a resilient spirit he is now healing and returning back to a normal life. It was truly a miracle that kept this from ending in tragedy.

But miracles don't show up everyday. Lessons do. So this morning when I saw the high speed chase my heart went out for the kids who were walking the streets on their way to school doing what they were supposed to be doing. And my prayers went out for the lessons we were supposed to learn from Stupid Doug, Fonzy, and little Peeps.