I have never been to Omaha before, and I'm here for 2 weeks for TSO rehearsals (Trans-Siberian Orchestra). On the very first night I was greeted with a very Omahaian experience. I haven't yet confirmed with the natives if these are usual proceedings, but here's the story. I was exhausted. It was Wednesday night, Oct. 15th, we'd been flying all day, we were tired, nervous meeting everyone for the first time, and after landing, the only thing I could think of was eating (which I did promptly upon hotel arrival) and going to sleep. That I did immediately after eating. By 10:30 I was out! During my dreams I heard all all kinds of banging and yelling, kind of like, 'police, open your door, this is the police', etc. At one moment I was blessed with a flash of consciousness and suddenly realized that I was in a hotel, not in a dream, and there were people out in the hallway banging on doors screaming, "POLICE, OPEN YOUR DOORS, THIS IS THE POLICE!!". Naturally I wasn't properly dressed, and assuming the hotel was on fire, I got up and put on more appropriate attire. I walked to the door and sure enough out of the peephole I saw police.
It wasn't probably a whole second that passed by the time I had delicately shrinked back into my room and lightly shut the door, but how many different thoughts can pass through a person's mind in the split second a gun is pointed at your head! I guess the first thought was, "oh, she's obviously got the wrong person"; and then the usual shock factor, "holy %$&* there's a woman pointing a gun at my head"; the more big-picture, "oh my what a great new experience to add to the experience bank, to actually know what it feels like to have a gun pointed at your head"; the more equal rights, "at least it's a lady pointing the gun at my head, go her"; and then there was the great physical feeling of a deep darkness on my left side, knowing that bold black barrel carried the capacity to conclude my . And the ladycop was in full-on CSI gun pointing mode. I don't watch enough TV to actually know if I'm citing the right TV show, but she had two hands on the gun, arms straight out, legs spread wide, one in front of the other, and she was about 3 meters or so from me. AOH BABY!
After slipping back into my room, I wasn't inside for more than a second before they all came banging on my door. I took a deep breath and prayed there would be no gun pointing at me when I opened the door - by this point I was mildly shaking and obviously stuttering. I tried to be friendly and ask if everything was ok as they barreled in, gun pointed down this time. They asked me if I had heard any gunshots, and I thankfully said "NO", because it may have been my last considering the barrel I had so recently been looking into was vividly imprinted on my mind. They circled the room and whizzed out, a male cop asking me again on his way out if I had heard any gunshots. And that was that. Whew. What a special greeting to the friendly city of Omaha!
I found out the next morning that it was a 'really bad' prank call - I quote the girl at the front desk. Someone called the police station and said he had just shot his wife and himself and was lying on the bathroom floor of the hotel room directly across from mine. It turned out not to be true. One of our riggers was in the room across from mine and wasn't opening his door because he had earplugs in, and when he finally heard all the noise he thought it was his buddies playing a joke on him. I think they may have actually broken the door down on him, poor guy! So nothing to worry about, and what fun we 7th floor-ers had sharing our stories at catering the next day!
Omaha looks like it's going to be an exciting place! The tour's off to a BANG of a start!
Love,
Luci
