The musings of a madman...

       Kids are, well, kids… I say that to say they’re loud, they talk too much, they’re restless, they test boundaries and they have not yet learned that it is not normal to repeat EVERYTHING they hear. [ Phlip note : to that last point, and given my breaking out into song with the last thing said to me, maybe I am still a kid? ] I say all that to say that the raising of kids should probably be more metered than the parents of gen-X’ers like myself had available to us.      Y’see… I never told anyone this, but before the beard and alcohol, I used to BE a little kid. I was overactive, I talked too much and I had a VIVID fucking imagination. Imagine that, ALL of that. But something was always off, and we would later learn to call that ADHD.      There were attempts to control this short of medication (nope, not in the 80s!) and asswhoopings (yes, plenty of THOSE in the 80s!) , and the middle ground that was attempted with me was bribery. I should put “bribery” in quotation mark

  Most of the time, I mind my own damned business.  Sure, my eyes are open and my head is on a swivel as I walk around my neighborhood three times a day but that is more for loose dogs and (now) kidnappers. I have learned here recently as this past Monday that my neighbors are watching or noticing me as I walk about.  There is the family on the corner that adopted a little dog named Duke.  His hair is similar to Shaggy Thunder, so they asked who my groomer was.  There are the kids that catch the bus oddly late and the lady with two dogs who is always interested in how my miles I clock a day. Those people are normal, as in I see them daily, sometimes multiple times.  Otherwise, though, there are other neighbors that I have NEVER seen outside in over two years now.  Yes, I know they come and go because I do notice cars in and out of driveways but I never see PEOPLE coming and going. … until last Thursday. Down at the bottom of the hill as I was coming back up my last three blocks

       Sometimes all it takes to ruin a situation is the situation itself…      We have been in this house for almost 17 months now.  I am a decent neighbor; I KEEP the grass cut, my dogs don’t run loose in the neighborhood, I pull my trash cans up from the street as soon as they have been collected and I don’t shoot in the air on holidays. … but I don’t particularly like people, so the BEST neighborly thing I do is minding my own fucking business and leaving people alone.      My wife, on the other hand, is a peopler and has a gregariousness that would cause me to cower into my mancave and lock the door. Compromise: when she decides to entertain, I will make sure the house is clean while I agree to be at least cordial and attempt to refrain from cursing around children.  No promises on that last one.      In that we are now in a neighborhood of people around our age who have children around the age of the youngest member of our household, her social flag flies higher.  Her hap