Our neighborhood needed a hero. On this evening, only one man could do the job.
Art by Pete Whitehead
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Story performed by: Aaron Calafato
Audio Production: Ken Wendt
Original Art: Pete Whitehead
Podcast Coordinator: Cori Birce
Creative Consultant: Anthony Vorndran
TRANSCRIPT
7MSCaptainKirk.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe
You're listening to 7 Minute Stories with Aaron Calafato, please keep on subscribing and leaving those five star ratings and reviews. It helps others find our podcast and that helps us out. Also, we want to hear from you. We set up a number you can call or text. It's 216 352 4010. Use it and share some feedback about one of Aaron's stories or a story of your own. We might feature your message on an upcoming episode. This episode, Captain Kirk.
Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five year mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before...
Last year. Cori and I were getting the kids ready to go to a Halloween party. Cori was inside and I was in the garage with the three kids. The garage door is open. I'm trying to wrangle them and get them in the car. Takes a while to do this. When something happened that none of us could have expected. We heard it all three kids and I heard it, and it was a kind of sound that triggered something in our brains to let us know that something was wrong. We just didn't know what. And it was funny because it was one of those sounds that, you know is scary and that is impending and probably dangerous. But we could not identify what the sound was. So our brains are working overtime trying to figure out what is that? And at first it sounded like, almost like a missile was coming towards the garage and it kept getting louder and louder and louder. And it felt like it was just going to, I don't know, fall on our house, whatever it was.
But as we peered outside the garage onto the street, we saw what appeared to be a car coming around the corner where we live. So I live in a quiet suburb and it's kind of a circle. But where we're at in our house, the road that goes around our house, is like an L shape. So it's a pretty sharp turn. And I'm looking out and I see a car that has to be going 60 - 65 miles per hour in a 20 mile per hour zone around a curve.
And this car is drifting. Smoke is coming from the tires and it's drifting around this corner. It was like a movie and it was all in slow motion. It felt like it was moving in super slow motion and the car appeared to be losing control. Now, let me paint a picture for you of what was going on besides me and the kids in the garage getting ready to go to this Halloween party. It's a beautiful weekend evening. Fall, dusk, colorful sky. There is people on their porch, kids riding their bikes around the neighborhood, people taking their dogs for a walk. And in fact, right across the street from my garage on the other sidewalk were two kids, about 10 years old, just walking. And as I'm watching this car in slow motion, I can see the dominoes fall. I can see the dots starting to connect. And I realized that this car, if it lost control, was going to flip over and it was going to kill these kids.
It was going to flip over and crush these kids right in front of me and my kids. And I don't know what happened, but thankfully, the car, as it went around the corner at such a high speed recklessly, it came up off its wheels so that it was on the right two wheels like the Dukes of Hazard. But it didn't flip over. And luckily, it almost tipped over and then came crashing down back onto four wheels right in front of our house on the street. And we're looking at this like a movie through the garage. And at this very moment, I could look inside of the driver's side window, which was open. And I saw the driver and I saw that there were two or three other people in the car. And as they were about to speed up the street, I looked at them and they were laughing. They thought it was freaking hilarious. And something inside me at that moment flipped. Like a light switch, went on. And I told all three kids, go inside, see Cori. And I'll be right back, and they did, and I took off...
I start sprinting faster than I've ever run in my life after this car and I'm running and I can see people from the neighborhood are looking at me and they're still in shock from this whole ordeal. And they're giving me looks and I'm thinking, man, they must just be in shock. And they must be like, maybe they're happy to see someone running after these people. But I noticed as I was continuing in pursuit of the car that I was kind of getting some weird looks from people.
And as I'm running, running, running faster, faster, I looked down at my arm and I see the shirt I'm wearing and I realized why they were looking at me this way. It's because I was dressed up as Captain Kirk. I totally forgot about the Halloween party I was going to. I had my hair slicked back, sprayed tight to my head. I had the whole yellow Star Trek getup, black pants, phaser. But it was a toy to my side. And here I am, I can imagine what they're thinking. They're already in shock. And here's Captain Kirk sprinting. You think that would stop me in my tracks, but it didn't. In fact, it emboldened me. It gave me strength. I thought to myself, you know what? What would Kirk do? I channeled my inner hero. And I was so pissed at what these people had done terrorizing my neighborhood, I had to do something.
So I actually followed them. I was getting winded, but I follow them. They got to a stop sign at the end of the street and then they turned around the corner and then parked at a house just down the way. And I was familiar with this house and I knew, in this car, that these people didn't live there. They must have been visiting. And then three twenty-somethings got out of the car, three guys, and I could see they were heading towards a garage. Looks like there was a big party and there was a gaggle of twenty-somethings. Just to give you the demo. It was like standing outside of the House of Blues right before a Marilyn Manson concert, that kind of deal. And there was a bunch of people in the garage smoking, vaping, all this kind of crap. So I knew I couldn't run into the garage. I wouldn't have made it out alive. But then I went over to the car they were driving, like a souped up Ford Escort. I took a picture of the license plate and I call the police and I make a report.
And as these kids are getting out of their car and walking to the garage, after I call the police, I am able to isolate them and I walk up to them. And I say, "hey!" and they turn around and look at me, I said, "Who was driving that car, was that just you? You almost killed people on that street." And they looked around and said "who me? Oh, he was driving. No, he was driving, he was driving." I said, "listen, I already called the cops. I already turn your license plate number in. But I'm going to tell you, I don't know what the cops are going to do. But if I ever see you driving around like that in this neighborhood again, I'm going to kick your ass." I said, "do it again and I'm going to kick the living shit out of you!." And one of them said, "all right, well, who the hell are you?"
And I thought about it for a second. Had my hands on my hips. And I looked at them and said, "I'm James T. Kirk. Who, the hell, are YOU?
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