the burbs

When you walk as much as Steve and I do, you see some pretty strange sights around the old neighborhood. Even in a neighborhood which is seemingly uneventful to the naked eye.

There is a woman who lives in the white house on the corner who I think is a witch. She walks around covered head-to-toe in linens: patterned sheets from the 80s. She stares at her feet (which are of course gray old woman shoes) and mutters to herself. I tell Steve she is cursing us/her other neighbors/her husband. Even her grass doesn’t have a chance. Every lawn in the neighborhood is at least greenish, and her’s is eerily brown. The only green is dandelions. It doesn’t even make sense because she has built-in sprinklers. Steve thinks I’m paranoid, but I’m just thinking logically.

There is a crazy kid that lives in the cul-de-sac. He has no friends and plays by himself. A few weeks ago, we caught him yelling at a rodent. He screamed, “get out of my parents’ garage, you squirrel!” I think it’s sad that he doesn’t think the garage belongs to himself, as well. There I go again, overanalyzing our neighbors.

There is a Catholic family that doesn’t believe in birth control or emitting carbon dioxide, apparently. They walk home from church, all eight children trailing like two ducks and their ducklings. They are the Duggars in training.

Yesterday, an unfortunate-looking teenager stopped me and Steve and asked if either of us would climb this tree to get his ball. “Climb a tree?” I said in the slow-down-repeat fashion that Patrick coined. It’s a sure way to make anything someone said sound incredibly stupid. Of course we didn’t climb the tree. Where I come from, adults ask kids for help, not the other way around. We’ve had enough birthdays to earn our way to paying bills, we’re certainly not going to start climbing trees. We’re evolving for God’s sake.