The Naked Guy on our Lawn

When I was in high school, my family and I lived in a 1920s era cape cod house in St. Paul, MN. The house was one of the parsonages owned by our church so we literally lived right behind the church. I loved our neighborhood in the middle of the city. It was historic and beautiful with cool boutique shops and cafes within walking distance. But it was also the city, so we had the dangers and hassles of living in the city too.
One summer my dad reseeded our lawn. He then carefully staked and roped off the lawn with string so no one would walk on the tender sprouts. It wasn’t much of a problem for us since we never used the front door anyways. We always came and went from the kitchen door on the side of the house.
As it was summer, we slept with our windows opened just a crack. We had special security locks on the windows, which allowed us to open them about 3 inches and no further. This was to keep out robbers, of course. Our house had already been broken into once, so we were naturally edgy about the windows. This night I was awakened from a dead sleep by a voice shouting very near to my window. “Get down or I’ll shoot! Get down or I’ll shoot! I don’t want to shoot you!” Then I heard someone running between our house and the neighbor’s house.
Paralyzed with fear, I lay there for a few seconds trying to wake up fully. Finally I rolled out of bed and ran into my parents’ room. Within the 10 steps it took for me to get to my Dad’s side of the bed I was sobbing! I woke my parents and told them someone has a gun outside my bedroom window!!
My Dad jumped out of bed and went running to the front of the house. There were police squad cars on the street and lights flashing in our windows. Something was going on. My Dad threw on some clothes and went outside to talk with the police officers loitering around the cars.
They had received a report that there was a man peeping in windows in our neighborhood. They found his pile of clothing around the corner from our house and saw him run naked between the houses. They chased him across the front lawns until he came to our house where he tripped and fell, tangled up in our lawn stakes and string meant to protect our seeds.
The poor police officer didn’t want to shoot a naked guy, but the dude wouldn’t stop struggling and the officer didn’t exactly want to tackle the guy either. Ultimately he got away. Trying to piece together a description of the guy should he ever see him on the street in the neighborhood, my dad asked for details. “Was he a white guy?” he asked the officers. “Yes… VERY White,” was the reply. Though we were on high alert for quite a while, the neighbors and our family got quite a laugh out of the policeman’s description of the naked guy on our lawn.