The thugs come out in the heat....

well, guess what? no pictures.

But its a good thing, and I'll tell you why.

I had planned to either take my girls to the park for some pictures, or to practice hitting with LegoQueen. I chose the latter.

We were at the park and I had the two girls with me. Hongo and Hairy Boy stayed home. There was a pee-wee game going on, so we took a far corner on the field by some guy with his boys playing football.
I was throwing to LegoQueen, and 5 teens walked up to us. Really slowly. I thoughtmaybe they were going to ask me for balls to play with, and I was getting ready to tell them no. Well, one strayed from the pack, and started walking closer to me. He was making me nervous/irritated so I asked him "Is there something you need or want to ask?" He smiled and said no. But he kept coming closer. Drama Queen was behind me, grabbing the balls that were being hit. He started walking behind me and got close to DramaQueen. I turned around and snapped at him "Hey, I don't want you near my daughter. What do you want?" He moved and lifted his shirt, exposing a gun. It LOOKED like a toy gun, but one can never be too sure. He said "does this look cheapy to you?" I said "What?" and he repeated himself. I bought myself enough time to confirm it was a toy gun, and I felt better about him not being able to shoot me. But I WAS worried that he was trying to distract me while his buddies may have attempted to snag my kids. LegoQueen had a bat, and wasn't afraid to use it.
So I said "I don't know if its a real gun - whatever. What do you want?" and he said "How about you give me your money?" I told him "Well, I don't have any money, so you'll have to shoot me here in the middle of the park." He started to walk away and when he had reached his friends, he pulled the gun out and pointed it at me. It was fake - it had an orange tip on the end that manufactuars are required to put on.
They started ambling away, until I whipped out my phone and started dialing. Then they started running away as fast as they could. I started to call home, then thought better of it and dialed sheriff's dispatch. Yes, I carry the dispatch line on my phone. It has come in handy in so many ways. I talked to dispatch, then I called Hongo. I went over to talk to the guy who was playing football with his kids and he said I should have screamed or done something and he would have come right over.
Just then two girls we knew came running over to play. One is my player, and the other is my ex-player. I had my player call her mom's cell, and I told her what happened. She said that they were planning on coming right over after the game to see what happened because her husband had seen the kids running away and me holding my phone. I told her what happened, and said I would see her in a little bit.
Just as I was getting ready to pitch to the girls, my phone rang again. Hongo had flagged down the deputy in the parking lot, and they were looking for me. I told the girls to clean up the balls and I started walking to meet the deputy.
As I was giving my report, a family came up and asked if this about the guy showing his gun to the kids on the playground. This little girl was threatened by him and ran crying to her mom. It made me SO mad. People like that ruin the park experience for children.

SO I gave my report, and I got the report number back just now. I am kicking myself - I have a camera phone and I could have tried to get a picture of them as they were leaving. They kept turning around as they were running away.

So good thing I didn't have my nice camera. It would have been difficult for me to use it as a weapon. Bats and balls are much easier to fight back with, lol.