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I have become “that neighbor”. You know the one: always yelling at people to get off her lawn, yelling at the other neighbors to turn their music down, complaining about everything everyone around her does. This really dismays me because, frankly, I should be the one everyone else is complaining about.
I mean, think about it. I have a zombie statue in my flower bed, I mow my lawn in clothes that are now way too big because of some weight loss (Yeah, I’ll go into that in a bit), I have a big mean (looking) dog who barks like a flipping jacked-up guard dog when she sees or hears something other than me, I have a badass tattoo which should be freaking out all the older neighbors, I return home late at night from various disreputable places (the corner bar is a dive filled with the dregs of society, but you know, it’s MY corner bar), I burn incense in my sunroom while I drink wine before five and write about killing people, and when I do raise my voice people who hear me probably think I’m ordering someone not to steal pasta (“Leave the cat-a-lone-ee!”). That’s just the things that are possibly open to the public. Let’s not forget the stuff they can’t see: medieval weapons collection, voodoo dolls, skulls, tarot card collection, guillotine, suit of armor, and the books with subjects like torture, Wicca, serial killer psychopathology, and fiction ranging from classical 19th century erotica to a complete collection of Shakespeare to Cormic McCarthy and Maya Angelou.
But yet, somehow, I have become the normal one around here. And I’ve been complaining about it. Of course, I’m not the normal grumpy old person living here. No. I’m much much worse. I’m a plotter. I’m evil. I am actively trying to think of ways to mess up lives. Worse, I feel justified in doing it. I’m quite convinced that I’m only trying to force people to do what is right. After all, I’m a taxpayer. I’m paying people to enforce these laws and I’m working for what I have. In addition, I try to be respectful of other people. In short, I am aware that I do not own the universe. As such, I feel like making these others aware as well.
First, there’s the poodle guy. His stupid poodles started going in my yard ago. I was home on vacation a day in March, eating cereal for breakfast at the kitchen sink, and I look out and see him standing out there and his stupid little dog sniffing around for a place up near my flower beds, where shortly I intended to go out and kneel and start planting some stuff. So, I put my bowl down and I ran outside and scared the dog into a clench and run. I asked the guy “What do you think you’re doing? We’re not going to start this again; are we?” And his reply: “I didn’t know you were home.”
This threw me into a blind rage and he’s lucky I didn’t go inside for my halberd and take off his head. I’m not sure what me being at work constitutes open bathroom privileges for this guy who’s trying to look all tough standing there with a little midget dog on the end of a leash. Frankly, it’s hard to be intimidating with a miniature poodle at the end of the leash. I do a much better job with the Rottweiler. Anyway, I got a sign which lies about me owning a digital camera set for monitoring my yard and two days after I put up the sign, I informed the dog warden who made note that the poodle guy only has tags for one of the two said dogs – yeah, here’s your fine, idiot. Also have the Perkins police looking out for him and they’ve been stopping him asking him if he has a baggie with him.
End result…it’s been a month since the sign and the visit and I have not stepped in any poodle poop since. Could this have worked?? Could I once again have found peace and harmony in my humble abode?
Well, not since the house across the street sold and was rented out to some lady with 7 kids under the age of 7. First impression: 6 am. The windows are closed, the a/c is running, and I’m asleep. I hear children laughing and screaming and their high pitched talking. It goes on for a while. In my half-dazed still asleep mind I think “Did a school bus break down in front of the house?” So I get up, because it keeps going and now the dog is kind of growling. I look outside and see: a very heavy woman holding a very newborn infant like a sack of potatoes in one arm while she rummages through an Expedition that’s filled with junk, three children in diapers only and three more in cotton pajama shorts running around in the front yard of the house across the street. Two of them aren’t running, they’re going through the trash left behind on the curb by the former owner. There a really skinny Jack-Sprat kind of guy in a wife beater shirt standing by the front door smoking a cigarette.
I think to myself that perhaps they’re all just excited about a new house. But in the days that follow I discover that they have 7 kids and no jobs and that this landlord bought the house specifically for them because the rental of hers they were in before got too small when they had another child. Seriously? No jobs and they have a SEVENTH child? I dig some more. Yeah, I was a reporter once. I was a very good reporter too, I could find out stuff and I could combine sources to come up with accurate information. I find out between mom and dad they have just under 100 misdemeanor charges filed at the municipal court (online records are the shit!). They apparently have a serious aversion to their fenced in backyard because these kids are constantly out in the front. Maybe mom and dad are hoping they lose one in traffic so they can make another without having to find an even bigger house. Worse, I saved and scraped and sacrificed to get a house in this neighborhood and now these fiscally and reproductively irresponsible people have managed to find someone dumb enough to actually BUY them a house. And of course there’s sure to be some bleeding heart at the county who is saying “Oh, we can’t just let all these children be homeless, they NEED to be in a home.” Yeah a home…like an orphanage...or perhaps we can put some people with jobs who pay their bills in that house with those kids and just let the parents live on the street. Guaranteed they wouldn’t be thinking about making more kids if they were working 15 hours a day to pay to feed those kids. Good thing I’m here working those 15 hours to feed those kids so they have good lungs and can scream over the top of Marilyn Manson screaming about The Beautiful People.
But this is where I realized that I discovered that I have become “that” neighbor. Kids make noise. I don’t have any so it probably irritates me more than most. But I’ve started to plan. I know how these things work, you see. I can almost guarantee that mom says dad doesn’t live in the house…which is technically welfare fraud. I can also guarantee that dad doesn’t pay child support to any of these offspring. I also know they’ve been cited for not having a legal child restraint (one of those many charges) and I’ve seen those kids jumping around in the minivan without car seats – yeah I know they had an Expedition at first, but now they seem to have gained a brand new minivan which sits in their driveway with temporary tags. I bet some church raised some money to buy it for them. I can only think of my brother who had to squeeze his children into a car with car seats for the first year of the twins’ lives until he could scrape up enough money to get a used minivan so his three kids fit. These people don’t work!!! ARGH!!!
I’m plotting. And I hate myself for it. I mean, right now those kids are young enough to be relatively harmless but eventually they’re going to grow up and become little non-working juvenile delinquents proudly following in their parents’ footsteps. I want to believe this won’t be the case; but when it’s 55 degrees out at 7 am and you’re three and running down the middle of the street while your father stands at the door smoking and screaming “Get your ass back here so someone can change your diaper, there’s shit running down your legs!”
What chance do you really have? Besides, why work when you’ve got a great house in a wonderful suburban neighborhood and a brand new vehicle to race through the neighborhood in.
If this seems like I’m rambling, please forgive me, my attention is being distracted by the fact that the parents have apparently locked the 7, 6, and 5 year old out of the house at 10 pm on a school night and they’re slamming the screen door…it sounds like gunfire….my dog is barking wildly. I’m plotting to report them to welfare investigations, but what good would it do? I mean, there aren’t enough foster homes for these kids and where would they all go? Obviously the kids will starve before the mama bear does, she’s not lacking sustenance. Besides, I’m sure the police will be frequent visitors around here. You can take the bums out of the inner city, but you can’t take the inner city out of the bums.
Which brings me to the topic of fat people, namely myself. I have not been running on my treadmill. I have not been running the streets. I have not. But I have been trying to eat breakfast, which is something I never have done in my entire life as in the half-asleep state that I call my morning I would end up with scrambled eggs on my face or something. But breakfast has helped. I have been losing weight slowly by eating three meals a day and not snacking…and not being so hungry by the end of the day that I eat a lot at night. The weight has come off slowly.
The other day I put on my jean shorts for the first time this year so I could go out and mow and clean the gutters—and the shorts fell right off. I couldn’t do anything to make them hang on. It’s a slow, steady loss thought. Nothing dramatic. It’ll probably get better when I start smoking to deal with the stress of my rapidly declining neighborhood--I'll join Mr. Wife-Beater shirt.
I mean the house next to me is for sale. One of the houses that abuts my backyard has renters in it that like hip-hop music really loud and then they have to scream at each other to be heard over it. The house directly behind me has an elderly couple who spy at me from behind their curtains (I can see them moving the curtains or when I go out with the dog, the curtains suddenly shut); at about 100 years old, I figure they’ll sell soon. The other house that abuts mine has a guy who just informed me his job will be eliminated and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do about paying his mortgage. Two doors down, the old guy there lets his grass grow four feet high rather than pay someone to mow it and he’s too old to mow it himself.
If you can't beat 'em join 'em. I can light up a Camel and look at him and say, "Hey, is that shit running down the back of your kids legs? I can't believe you're going to have to change that diaper twice in one day."
