Neighbors
Sunday
I turned off the main road through our subdivision onto our street.
“Don’t make plans to go anywhere until you’ve unpacked everything and washed your clothes,” I said to the spud. We were on our way home from the airport, from where I’d just retrieved her.
“Okay.”
There’s a slight curve in our street, maybe fifty yards from the turn. Just before that curve, an SUV sat parked against the right curb, so I took the curve a little wide to miss it. Rounding the curve, I spotted our next door neighbor, Mr. Smith, pushing his 2-year-old daughter in her stroller some seventy-five yards distant. They were plodding along right down the middle of the left lane. Two hundred twenty-five feet away.
I was traveling no more than 20 miles an hour, as I always make a point to do on our street, because it’s loaded with kids who don’t understand the difference between yard and street. I cut the wheel to the right to give them the widest berth possible. In the eight seconds it took me to get to them, Mr. Smith flung himself and the stroller to the left, like I was going seventy miles an hour on a street that’s less than a tenth of a mile long. As I passed them, he grimaced and snarled, “SLOW DOWN!” at me.
These people let their kids play IN THE STREET all the time, then glare insolently at us because we have the unmitigated gall to want to drive on it from time to time. Any time the kids are playing in the street when I’m coming home, I stop several houses away and wait for mom to race out and frantically drag them to the side of the road before she ignores my smile and wave when I drive by. Ditto for when I’m leaving, except I have to sit at the end of the driveway and wait for the same treatment.
All that, and now this motherfucker is SNARLING at me to slow down when I was already under the speed limit, while he ignored the fucking sidewalk that runs down the street and instead pushed his stroller down the middle of the road.
People, there was almost an altercation in front of Fred’s house Sunday afternoon.
However, I bit back my fury and drove by him, choosing instead to let it fester all night so I could write an indignant entry about it.
Damn neigbors.
Monday
I pushed myself away from the computer and stood. After a day of impatient waiting, the time to go get Robyn from the airport had finally arrived. All I needed to do was change out of my nappy lay-around-the-house clothes and into something I was comfortable wearing in public and I’d be off.
The doorbell rang.
I glanced out front, expecting to see a UPS or FedEx truck. Nothing. I peeked around the corner of the foyer wall, checking the area outside the door. Two teenage boys stood there. Behind them, their bikes lay in the front yard.
One of them pounded loudly on the door.
I ignored it, assuming they were selling magazines, candy, or something else we don’t need.
The doorbell rang again. They were nothing if not persistent.
I waited for them to leave, so I could go upstairs and change clothes.
They didn’t leave.
As one pounded on the door a second time, louder than the first, I noticed through the flimsy curtains covering the windows on either side of the door that the other was standing out in the yard looking up toward the second floor. I realized he could probably see the spud up there on her computer.
In other words, they weren’t leaving.
I opened the door and stepped out.
“Hi,” one said. “We were riding by and we noticed something we thought you would want to know about.”
He explained the situation to me, and led me out into the grass so I could clearly see over into the Wilson’s—our other next door neighbors, currently on vacation—front yard.
So I could clearly see their large Bradford Pear tree, which had, without the benefit of wind, rain, or storm, split in half and fallen across our driveway in the hour since I was just out there getting the mail. Half a tree. Across our driveway. Five minutes before I was to leave to fetch Robyn. While the Wilsons were on vacation.
“We thought you’d want to know about this before you try to leave for work tomorrow,” the first boy said.
“I do, thanks for letting me know.” I smiled. “I thought you guys were selling something. That’s why I took so long to answer the door.”
“You can buy him,” the boy said, and pointed at his friend.
With great reluctance I bit back the snappy homoerotic joke that popped into my head and just widened my smile.
I thanked the boys and they left. I turned my attention to the half a tree laying across the driveway. You’d probably never know this without me here to tell you, but half of a twenty-five foot tall tree? It’s heavy, and unwieldy.
I pulled. I lifted. I rocked. Nothing, because the split end was wedged in between two large branches. I got up under the split part and lifted. I could raise the end, but not move it from side to side because I lacked the leverage.
For one brief horrifying moment I thought I was going to have to go over to Mr. Smith’s and ask him to help me get half a tree off my driveway.
Oh, hell no.
I tried another mighty heave and succeeded in getting the split end of the tree free. Then, I grabbed several small branches at the other end and slowly spun the split section off our driveway and into the Wilson’s yard. It took several minutes, and I imagine I looked like one of those carnival strong men trying to pull a railroad car because I was so leaned over dragging the tree, but I did it.
Damn neighbors.
Last Wednesday while lifting weights (overhead triceps extension, if you must know), I felt a sharp pain in my left triceps that made me immediately put the weights down. A bad pain. A tearing pain.
This is what I discovered yesterday, during a conversation with a co-worker who noticed and asked if Robyn was beating me:
Like I said, it hurt.
I think I’ll take a little time off the weights.
