I live on a college campus; my dorm room window overlooks a parking lot. For such a big school, UofL's campus is usually really, really quiet. Just not tonight.

Some sort of social event let out as I got home from babysitting, but this is a relatively regular occurrence and the noise didn't much interest me. Then I noticed that there was a much bigger than usual crowd. Then the noise started to swell.

I became curious enough to look out my third-floor window, and I saw, off to the side of the huge crowd, two guys in white shirts having a fistfight. Their friends pulled them apart, and the campus police were there within minutes, but it was a guy in an orange shirt who was pulled off into a squad car, and the crowd wouldn't disperse, both of which I found strange.

Three other guys walked over to the squad car and started yelling things into the back window, ostensibly to the guy in the orange shirt. I couldn't make out any of what they were saying. The police officer by the car told them to leave a couple of times, and they kept refusing and getting closer until the cop was forced to pull out his nightstick. Then the guys left. I was relieved that they did.

Then the city police arrived, which really startled me; at this point, I was glued to my window. A woman's voice came very clearly through a bullhorn: "The party's over, people. Move on ..." Kasie from across the hall heard the sirens and came over, and we stood at my window and watched ... and waited. There was a small knot of people standing between two rows of parked cars, and there were police among them, but that small group was not going anywhere, and the cops weren't making them.

Suddenly, we heard more sirens and saw more flashing lights, but these lights weren't red and blue; they were red and yellow -- an ambulance, which pulled up beside the knot of people. Things started to click into place in our heads. We started wondering if we'd heard anything that could have been a gunshot. It seemed to take forever for them to put the person on the stretcher, and it also seemed that they weren't in any hurry. When they pulled a white sheet over the stretcher, Kasie and I both freaked and tried to see if they'd covered the person's face. Then the ambulance stayed still for a very long time, and I could see people putting rubber gloves on through the windows in the doors, so I presumed that they were working on the injured person and that he/she was still alive.

After that, most of the crowd left, except for another group of people who had moved to the parking lot immediately behind the one where all the action was taking place. I began to worry that another fight would break out, and indeed, it seemed inevitable, but suddenly people were getting into their cars and leaving until only two cops were left in that area as well, and then they, too, left. I have never been so relieved to see the parking lot empty. Kasie went to bed.

As I was about to turn away from my window, I saw my friend Peng walking below and I asked him what on earth had happened. From him I learned that someone had been stabbed; he later said that there was blood all over the place.

But wow. This all happened in what is, in essence, my own backyard. Even now, an hour after everything has calmed down, I'm looking out on the parking lot and finding "normal" to look rather strange in the light of what's happened. It seems really odd that a place so currently devoid of action was earlier swarming with cars and people and events.

I also found it interesting that I was more interested than scared as I was watching. I was worried for the stabbing victim, certainly, but mostly I kept being curious about what would next develop instead of being terrified that this was going on so close to home.

Additionally, I was extremely impressed with the efforts of both the campus and city police forces in handling the matter, and I'm going to write them a letter to tell them so.

Hopefully everything will return to normal now. I've been reminded that I like it so much better when things are normal.

-Cynth"will never complain about just plain old noise again"ia