THIS HAPPENED

Panic Explodes on a Saturday Night

Is this the future?

Fireworks in downtown Baltimore, photo credit Baltimore.org

It was 8:30 or 9:00 pm on a Saturday in our Baltimore, Maryland home. We were watching a TV show and I felt vibrations in the room. I was hearing loud bangs from somewhere outside. The shelves in the family room were shaking from the blasts.

“Something’s going on,” I said to my husband and I went outside to hear what sounded like gunfire. Our neighborhood isn’t always quiet, we hear emergency sirens all the time. But this was a lot of gunfire, without sirens.

I stayed outside and listened to the explosions in the distance for a bit. I didn’t see the sky lighting up with sparkles. It was hard to tell where they were coming from, perhaps downtown Baltimore or Washington, D.C.? But they were loud and increasing in pace.

Baltimore is about an 80-minute drive to D.C., our nation’s capital. We don’t have military bases by us, however, we do have several military bases north of us near the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is a strategic city. After all, it was the Baltimore harbor being attacked by the British when Francis Scott Key wrote the “Star Spangled Banner.”

It was bitterly cold and it was late. We wanted to think it was fireworks, but why would there be fireworks? If I’d heard them on Inauguration Day I…