Never Experienced THAT Before...

Okay, so I'm outside at work, having a smoke, and the new Morning News director gets out, lights up and joins me.

We're having a casual, cool conversation about how he's doing (I've heard gret things from one of the directors that has been at the station the longest) when we hear...

POP,
POP,
POP,
POP.

Now, since January I've heard firecrackers going off now and then. As recently as a month or so ago.

This was louder than what I'm used to hearing, and there are only 4 blasts... but seriously, what are the odds it's the other thing: gunfire?

I posit that it's probably fireworks and am about to explain what I just told you when we hear...

POP,
POP,
POP.

I count... 7 blasts. If it were a gun, it wouldn't be revolver (or would it? I really don't know guns). It's only the big guns that fire more than 6 rounds, isn't it?

The new director -- or maybe it was me -- start to say something else when we hear...

POP,
POP,
POP, ZING.

That's a gun!


We're right next to the door we usually use to get in and out of our section of the building, but to enter that way would directly expose us to the direction the blasts are coming from. (And, as I mentioned before, this is loud, so this is CLOSE.) So we bolt around to the oposite side of the building, where the News department resides.

As we run -- impressively quietly in addition to swiftly -- we hear a final...

POP,
POP,
POP,
POP.

Or it might have been 5 blasts.

We try our card keys on the News door, knowing they won't work, but the 2 producers manning the News department and preparing the morning newscast buzz us in.

We tell them what happened and I call 911 from my cell. The conversation is short and after the cop gets the info he tells me there are already units on the way and asks if I need anything else.

After getting back inside the building I'm flooded with the adrenaline of the full realization of what has just happened.

I mean, it's not like whomever was shooting was shooting at me, but STILL! That was a first for me!

Later, the director said it sounded like a 22 (is that a b-b gun? What are b-b guns called?) which makes me think that maybe someone who lives next door to the station saw a possum -- there are plenty around here, particularly in nice weather like we're currently experiencing -- and that makes more sense than a sniper randomly firing in the wee hours of the morning.

But the station is just right down the street from UT and the infamous "Whitman tower".

Blah.

Anyway, half an hour or more later I haven't heard or seen anything else, and have no more information about what happened. I just went back out for a smoke (I really needed one... I didn't get to finish my last one) and came back inside without incident.

Still... Creepy! I've just about always lived in the suburbs. I'm not used to hearing gunshot so close to me.

And I'm sharing this with you in hopes of getting it out of my system so I can better focus on my job. Which I need to get back to, hehe.

PEACE!!!

And may you NEVER hear gunshots in real life, whoever/where ever you are!!!

:D