Well, at least he didn't have a gun, right?

People always ask me what crime was like in New York and Colombia, if I felt safe, if there were a lot of pickpockets, and my answer is always the same, "If you pay attention, you'll probably be fine. Something can always happen, no matter where you are and no matter how many precautions you take. Sometimes you just have bad luck, but in general, it's not as big of a concern as you'd imagine." In New York, I often mention that for cities of its population size, it's one of the safest in the United States. The question used to most often come from concerned Hoosiers who viewed NYC as the "the big bad city," which made it ironic that the one time I was held at gunpoint in my life was while I had come back to Indianapolis for my Aunt Andrea's funeral.

In the ongoing bizzaro world situation of Le Mans basically being the French Indianapolis, people often ask me the same question here, and as of last night, just like in Indianapolis, I had another unnerving experience. Jeremy and I had gone out with friends that night, and we got home pretty late. We had stayed up, talking and discussing, when there was a knock at our door. Neither of us were all that shocked. I immediately assumed it was probably a friend who had accidentally left something behind at our apartment before going out to the bars.

Jeremy looked through the peep hole, assumed it was a neighbor and opened the door. The man, who was about our age and whose face was difficult to see with his hood up, started to try to walk into the apartment. Jeremy, reacting quickly, pushed him out and slammed the door shut. The man pushed on the door, and we quickly turned the deadbolt, which lead him to start grabbing and turning the knob. I was still a bit shocked and looked at the door, and distinctly remember feeling cornered and not really sure what I could do to get him to go away. So I slammed my hands on my side of the door, which made a rumbling sound through the building, and yelled "I'm calling the police!" which I'm sure was so very intimidating in my awkward American accent.

I turned to Jeremy and told him to call the police because right after I said I was going to call the police, I became aware of an embarrassing detail: I never really committed the emergency numbers in France to memory. He was on hold with them for what felt like some time, and when he finally speaks to a person, he was told "just don't open the door" and "everyone's getting broken into tonight." The police never showed.

Equally effective

Sometime during the police call, the man stopped messing with our doorknob and went up to another floor. Jeremy turned off the light, and I crouched down in front of our windows that open onto the street. I flashed back to the time I had been in the proximity of a shooting (also in Indianapolis), and while, stupidly, the majority ran to go watch, I moved away from the windows and to the back of the store I was in. I did the same here, and it was only until I had calmed down that I realized it was extremely unlikely he had a gun, unlike in the US. Meanwhile, Jeremy had opened a window to look out onto the street, and I pulled him back in by the shirt and shut the windows. 

We both continued to watch, and we saw the man eventually leave our building. A car pulled up and the hooded man talked with a woman (who we're pretty sure lives in our building). After their talk (which I couldn't understand), the hooded man got in the car with a bunch of others and the care drove away, and we breathed a sigh of relief. 

Afterward, we began to sort through the facts, and Jeremy decided that he was probably someone who lived in our building but had got confused about which apartment was his since he was probably extremely drunk. In the end, he probably meant us no real harm and was just so drunk he had no idea what he was doing or where he was, but the entire experience was unnerving to say the least, if for no other reason than it reminded me of past experiences. It's been a couple days since, and I still feel a bit paranoid. When I walk around at night, I'm nervous that I'll run into him, and when I wake up in the morning or come back home, I have the irrational fear that he or someone else will be there. Like I said, he probably had no intention to rob us; he was probably just some drunk guy who didn't know where he was or what he was doing, but these things stick with you for a while. When I had a gun held at my face while someone demanded my money, I was nervous for weeks to walk around on the street, even though it was a completely different city. I imagine I'll have a few more days of being nervous. Regardless of the circumstances or motivations, there's something about a home invasion that shakes a fundamental part of you because it challenges what we all believe deep down: that you're unquestionably safe in your home. But hey, at least that means I know now I have a home.