It's Spring Break here. Kids are out of school for the week. People are either on vacation or packing as many local activities into the day as possible. Easter is this Sunday.

So Wednesday afternoon, after I got off work, I grabbed my daughter and told her we needed to go shopping. Meantime my husband was on his way to a seminar.  We go to Walmart for garden plants (tomatoes, basil, strawberry, parsley) and some groceries. I am able to find everything on my list except the egg dye for Easter eggs. So this is not good. Because my husband had gone out the day before looking for the egg dyes at Harris Teeter and Bi-Lo and didn't find any.  Of course I could research and try using food coloring and natural dyes but I don't want my baby to be disappointed if it doesn't go well.

So as I leave the Walmart parking lot, I am thinking to myself where might I also find what egg dyes. Hey! I bet I can get it at the Dollar Tree (everything for a dollar). The Dollar Tree is a quarter of a mile away in the strip mall next block. So I drive over to the Dollar Tree. We walk in and sure enough there is the plain-jane egg dye. (For those of you who don't know what I mean by the description plain-jane, it simply means no thrills). So my daughter and I are all thrilled again and we head back out to the car.

Here's where things get interesting.  The Dollar Tree is in a big strip mall full of name brand stores like Toy R Us, HH Gregg, Panera Bread Company, Petco and such. And the Dollar Tree is in the very back of the parking lot (way back which until this point never bothered me before). So we get back into the car and drive through the parking lot at a leisurely pace, so as not to hit the people crossing the parking lot to the many stores, when I hear a siren. I look to my left, up an isle of parked cars and there is a silver car coming right toward us with a police car with flashing blue lights behind him.  I keep moving forward in an unhurried fashion, thinking the police is going to pull the silver car over for a fender bender in the parking lot or something similiar. Nope. That is not what was going on.

In my rear view mirror, I see the silver car picking up speed and turning to his right away from the police car who is picking up speed with his siren still on. Then ahead of me I see another police a block away with his siren and blue lights on heading our way. Oh crap, oh crap! I say outloud and my daughter is asking "what is it mom?"  "J, it is a police chase in the parking lot. We got to get out of here, NOW!" She's like, "Where?!?!" "Behind us baby. See the cop car following the silver car to the back of the parking lot from where we were parked?"

She did. So I am no longer driving at a leisure pace. I get to the traffic light heading out of this parking lot. I make a right turn on the main road right as the other cop car is making the right turn into the parking. He was coming from one direction I was going out the other direction just as the light was turning red for me. I get on the main road (3 lanes in both directions). Four blocks away, I am in the left turning lane waiting for the light to turn green, I call my husband.

"Guess what we just saw?"
"What?"
Yelled over my shoulder, "Daddy, we saw a police chase!"
"WHAT? sounded like a police chase."
"Yeah, that is what she said. It started in the parking lot we were in. I got out of there as quickly as I could.  We are heading home now."
"Ha ha ha. A bit of excitement, huh?"
"Oh SHIT OH SHIT!"
"What is it?"
"They got out of the parking lot. They're heading this way. The Silver car now has 3 cops behind them and they are really speeding now."
"Crap! Why won't this light change? Oh my God he is going to hit that truck making that turn."
"It's ok momma. The truck stopped in time, but that cop car behind him is really going fast."
My husband could hear tires screeching over the phone. The silver car and the 3 cops made the right turn without hitting any cars. My turn light was still red. And then two more cops come, one was a speeding marked car, and the other was unmarked brown car which had flashing lights around the headlights. Both of those cars made the right turn at high speed and almost hitting a car that was going to make the same turn.

Later that night, I looked for something about the chase on the news but there wasn't anything. I don't even know if they caught the guy, but I am sure they did. As an after thought I kind of wished I had recorded it with my phone and posted it. Twice I had the prefect view for it. But with my daughter in the car, I was more worried about the whole thing becoming something ugly. Like they could have cornered the silver car in the parking lot and it could have turned in to a shoot out. Or the silver car could have decided to turn left into oncoming traffic to chance causing a wreck to lose the cops instead of turning right at the traffic light I was at. I'm just glad we are safe.