Materials Used
Transcript
Hey guys. Thanks for joining me for today’s Zentangle video. I’m just going to get set up here and then we’ll get going.
For today’s Zentangle, I don’t have anything too specific planned. I’ve grabbed a tile left over from Project Pack 10 and I’m going to put down a little watercolor from a travel set I have before I start actually drawing.
At some point this past week, I watched a video where a creator did some loose watercolor on a tile and then she started her tangle with the Zentangle pattern Bales. And so I credit her for how I’m starting my own tile today — or I guess I should say I would credit her if I could find that video again.
I’ve been scrolling through my watch history trying to find that reference again, and it’s like it just vanished into thin air. Anyway, if I do find it at some point in the future, I’ll pin a comment with that link for you.
If you know the video I’m talking about and can help out, let us all know. Because it’s really driving me nuts.
As always, materials I use for this Zetangle will be listed in the description with my Amazon affiliate links, if you’d like to support the channel.
So, I’m keeping it pretty simple today: a single water color, an 01 black Micron pen, and an 08 Gelly Roll — you know, plus the usual graphite and tortillon for shading.
I have edited out a lot of the boring footage here, but I spent a lot of time just staring at this tile at various parts along the way and going, “What the heck am I going to do with this thing?” I don’t know. Maybe you can relate to that.
Anyway, it’s been a little bit since I’ve done a Tangled Talk, and I’m not real sure everyone out there’s ready for what’s really on my mind. So I thought I’d tell you all a little story about my one and only direct interaction with the police.
It took place some time in the early aughts — I’d say like, between 2000 and 2002. I lived alone in one of those little 800-square-foot post-World War II houses in a very working class neighborhood in Evansville, Indiana at the time.
I was in my early twenties and 2 cops came to my house in the middle of the night. One circling my house shining his flashlight in my windows, the other guy was alternately beating my front door and like rapid-fire ringing my doorbell like he was a 12 year old about to lose an arcade game or something. My dog was riled and barking. I was scared, you know, which in retrospect doesn’t seem all that unreasonable a reaction to have.
In addition to just being groggy because I was awoken from a deep sleep, I was also pretty loopy from allergy meds. (Benadryl has always just absolutely wrecked me.) At the front door I looked out, you know, the peephole and when I saw 2 uniformed officers, I opened the door.
Uh, I don’t know now if I would…if I would make that same choice again, um. But, I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t opened the door to them then that things probably would’ve gone a little worse.
The officers told me they’d received a call about Tiffany. Tiffany was supposedly suicidal, and they’d been asked to check in on her. Their story was “we’re here for a wellness check, ma’am” but, uh, the vibe was definitely more like, you know, two-man police raid. It was not fun.
I went back & forth with them for several mins I guess. It felt like a half an hour maybe but was probably more like
5 or 10 mins. They took turns interrogating me. Asking me things like, you know, “What are you doing here?” And I was like, “Sleeping.” “Where’s Tiffany?” I told them I didn’t know who they were talking about. But they just kept asking things, you know. “Who else is with you?” and yada, yada.
They kept insisting that they needed to check on Tiffany and that I needed to let them inside my house. Letting them inside wasn’t feeling like a good idea though.
My grogginess cleared a little though after, you know, my body adjusted to being awake, and at that point I pointed to my house number by the door. Thinking this had to be some kind of error on their part, you know? I asked them if my house number was the number they were given. One of the officers at that point stepped back off my front stoop and turned his back to me.
I could see that he had his thumb on his radio button, but he was talking low and he’d turned the volume down on it so I couldn’t hear either side of the conversation he was having. When he finished, though, he put a hand on the second cop’s shoulder and mumbled something in his ear. You know, I couldn’t hear exactly what he was saying.
There was some frowning, and then they both turned and walked away muttering for me to have a good night or something equally insulting. They didn’t explain what happened (though I think the most likely explanation is just that they screwed up the address). They didn’t offer even the slightest apology while they were going. They just…left.
I was like, what the hell just happened? I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I just sat on the couch shaking for the next 15 minutes. To this day, when cops approach, I — a white woman with “nothing to hide” — have an automatic adrenal response. I visibly shake.
Enough people thought I was exaggerating how terrified I was that I left that part out when I retold this to people later. And then eventually I just stopped telling it altogether.
But last summer my husband was driving us back from Taco Bell one evening and he got pulled over for speeding. I knew why the cop was there and had no obvious reason to be afraid, but that autonomic adrenal response kicked in anyway, and I just started shaking while trying to sign into my insurance app, and I couldn’t get signed in. Just physically couldn’t make my hands and my brain coordinate to get my proof of insurance. You know, I was fumbling over the password to get into the app.
Anyway, the cop was like, “Nevermind, I’m going to let you go on that one. But get that insurance stuff sorted because technically I could ticket you for not having proof of insurance too.” Ugh. Cops.
When we were back on the road driving, my husband was like, “Dude, what the hell? You were twitching like we just robbed a bank or something. I’m surprised he didn’t make us get out of the car and pat us down.”
And then I was like, you know, “It’s called PTSD, Dan.” And that’s when it dawned on me that I had never told him the story.
Anyway, moral of this episode of Tangled Talk is: don’t send the police to perform wellness checks, like, ever, because they fucking suck at it.
Thanks for coming to my Tangled Talk. We’ll let the music play us out…
