No officer, I didn't see that...

Wow. We're lucky to be alive. Danielle and I went to Jared - "The Galleria of Jewelry" to look at wedding bands. The store was decent enough, and the staff was pretty helpful, which is nice, especially since everything in a jewelry store costs a hundred billion dollars. They offered us a tour around the joint when we first got there, which was kind of awkward because the store is decently sized, but it's not THAT big. I mean, you can see from one end to the other and recognize people across the room. They didn't bring us over to the free cookies and coffee during the tour, which was minus points in my book. We didn't see that until the officer sat us down to debrief us.

Anyways, so we spent some time (and by some time, I mean over an hour) looking at rings for Danielle. We tried channel set, prong set, plain, pretty, ugly, large and small rings, and even one that looked kind of like a Buick hood ornament. We eventually got it down to two - both channel set. We decided to take a break from that and head over and look at men's rings. I was even more finicky than Danielle, and ended up trying on about 25 rings. I had it decided down to two white gold jobs when the front doors slammed open and the first shot rang out. I think the bullet lodged itself somewhere in the ceiling above me.

"Everyone get the [expletive deleted] on the floor!" I grabbed Danielle and pulled her down to the floor with me. Ironically enough we'd been through this once before - in a Stop and Shop of all places. I had a lot of thoughts at that moment, and as much as I'd like to say they were focused on how I could be a better person if I got out of this, I really only thought about two things - "this wicked sucks", and "I hope we don't get held up too late to get to dinner." I was really hungry, cut me some slack, okay?

The security guard was a lot of help, because he laid down about 10 feet from us, and tossed his gun on the floor away from him. A model of bravery and valor, that guy was. Anyways, there were two quite stereotypical robbers in the store, both dressed in black with ski masks on. I'll refer to them as Bossman and Lackey, because one of them was clearly in charge, and the other reminded me of Teller from Penn and Teller. Bossman shouted "hurry up," and pointed towards the luxury watch case. I didn't have a good view of Bossman after that, but I assume he went to try and take some diamonds and other assorted gemstones. Lackey hurried over to the watches, where I had a good view of him, and dutifully shoved the handle his pistol into the case to break it open. Unfortunately for him, the case isn't made of glass, so the gun popped out of his hand and slid onto the floor.

It didn't go far, so he picked it up - looking more awkward than frightening - and tried again. The case gave way with an unpleasant snapping sound, and then he was hunched over the case, presumably taking some Tag Heuer watches, and other assorted fine timepieces.

"Time to go - now!" Something must have set Bossman off, because he had a panicked tone in his voice. Bossman left the store quickly, but with more grace than you'd expect a masked robber to have. Lackey on the other hand, stumbled out of the store and tripped right at the door. Someone snorted, like they were trying to hold back a laugh. Lackey must not have liked that, because he shot someone towards his left and then walked out. Bummer for that guy on the left.

The next half hour was as uninteresting as the parts of Law and Order that they don't show you. We answered questions about what we saw - or didn't see - multiple times. All in all, it was a pretty deflating experience. When a jewelry store gets robbed, isn't the SWAT team supposed to drop through the ceiling lights and secure the perimeter with snipers and canine units? Did Hollywood lead me down a false path? Is life really this procedural? Man, next they're going to tell me that you really can feed a mogwai after midnight.

Well, after that we paid for our rings and their lifetime service plans and left the store. It was hard to get out of the parking lot with all the police cars and the coroner van and stuff, but one nice officer moved his car so we could get through. Then we went down the street to Cactus Jack's and had some barbecue chicken.

All in all, not a very eventful evening. But we did get free cornbread, which is sweet.