The Felon and the Clinic

I run into strange characters during my dog walks. One of these characters is a short man that I always find near the Wedge Co-Op on my morning dog walks to Lake of the Isles.

He usually sits on a retention wall with a large beer can. This is usually around 9am so I guess these are his breakfast beers. This guy continually tries to start conversations with me. I smile and avoid eye contact.
He told me that he is from Mississippi. He just got out of prison and he doesn’t know anyone up here. He also likes rottweilers.
I now avoid that area on my morning dog walks and haven’t seen the felon in a month.

So I was surprised this afternoon when I opened my apartment building’s door and saw the felon and a cracked-out woman. They were lurking by the door, waiting to be let in.

I had already opened the door when I noticed them, so I was screwed. They rushed the door:

Crackella: “Excuse me, I left my shrimp upstairs.”

They then shoved past me and scurried upstairs.

I call the local police precinct while biking to school. The cops don’t care. The cop at the desk tells me that I can either call 911 or get over it. I decide that the felon running around the building is not serious enough to warrant a 911 call. I call my landlord and he is equally unsympathetic.

It is awkward enough biking while talking on the phone. I didn’t want to get pissy while navigating downtown Minneapolis traffic so I dropped the subject. The random sketchtastic people roaming the building were officially not my problem. Hopefully they don’t burglarize my place.

This was my first bike ride to school since moving from Dinkytown. The only class I had today was my Tax law clinic. I apparently was the only one in the classroom not to get the email with the syllabus. The professor thinks I’m too stupid to check my junk mail.

The most annoying part of the situation was that I called the clinic office last week and a very friendly secretary told me that nothing had been sent out, there was no reading for the first day of class, and that a syllabus would be distributed in class.

Yeah, she was wrong. I felt utterly unprepared. I hate that.

After the clinic I went to the school gym for the first time this semester. The gym was packed with freshmen and it took almost 30 minutes to checkout a locker. I then biked back home and was relieved to see that my apartment wasn’t burglarized.

If I see the felon or Crackella again, I’m calling 911. I will also be prepared for my clinic next week…hopefully.