Proverbs 14, Verse 2
"Even his own neighbors despise the poor man, while the rich have many 'friends'."
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CHIPPED WISDOM:
You can't think of everything. Even I, a master worrier and contingency planner and seer-of-things-that-canst-thou-goest-wrong, even I occasionally miss a step and misstep. For nine long months we had that no-dog feeling. Under-stimulated (whoa) and bereft, we wandered mindlessly through our day with nary a useful thing to do with a leftover plastic grocery store bag but stupidly put it in a tin canister for... no good reason other than that's what we used to do with leftover plastic grocery bags when we had a dog.
So... we got a dog.
Aside from the fact that our Basset Hound hasn't quite figured out the outside bowel movement exclusivity arrangement yet, she's pretty much the perfect dog. But, when you're without a dog for a long time, and there's that part of you that really really really wants one, you forget about some of the nice things that come with not owning one. Like not having to stand outside like a dumbfuck scarecrow while you're waiting for some animal on a leash tethered to your tightly-wound fist in the pouring rain so it can squeeze out a turd before you can go to work.
And then there's that other thing. That other thing that becomes especially more prevalent when the temperature warms up. You know what I'm talking about.
You know.
When you own a dog, you have to take it on walks. And, when you take your dog on walks, you invariably run into your neighbors. Not just the next-door-ones either. People on your street, people that live down the street. Up the street. Across the street. The street that's parallel, the ones that are perpendicular. Angles. Acute. Obtuse. My neighbors are isosceles.
I hate them.
Even the neighbors I kind of like, I despise.
"OH! You got a NEW. DOG. (!?) She's SO. CUUUTE. (!!!) What's her NAME?"
Can
I
say
hello
to
her
?
?
?
It's not that I don't like my neighbors, it's just that I wish they would all drop dead. Immediately, together. In a pit of some kind. With snakes and horny, rabid rats that have been starved and tortured for at least 3 weeks. And lemon juice. This pit should be filled with lemon juice-- the rats and the snakes should be swimming in it. And it should be unsweetened. I said lemon juice, not lemonade. I don't want anyone enjoying themselves in there.
My wife and I often talk fantasy talk-- and I don't mean like where I dress up like Count Chocula and she wears a chainmail diaper and we coat ourselves in marmalade-- about what life will be like when we have time and money to retire. You know, when I'm 87 and she's 86. For me, an idyllic retirement would be a house on maybe two or three acres, with big fucking trees everywhere, lining the property like an honor guard of soldiers, ready to protect and defend our right to privacy to the last. I don't think two to three acres is asking too much. I don't need a rolling estate with gay footmen winding the clocks, but I wouldn't thumb my nose at a little distance from the neighbors.
It's funny-- I'm a strange conglomeration of nice and mean. I can put on a great show and exchange pleasantries and social niceties with the best of them. I can pretend I'm interested in your lawn-mower or your children or your newest end-table or your newest mole, but, really, I'm dying inside, and secretly I can't wait to scurry back to the hermetically-sealed enclosure of my tightly shut-up house and loudly mock you with my wife.
HA!
I'M MOCKING YOU!
I'M MOCKING YOU!
YOU JUST WANNA HAVE A NICE CONVERSATION WITH ME ABOUT NOTHING AND THEREFORE YOU MUST BE PUNISHED!
I just want to run away, and maybe all the judging I do is just projection. They're tsk-tsk'ing me. My grass is too long. The hedges are Afro-esque. There's too much shit on our front porch. The pachysandra is fucked up on one side of the front lawn. We don't measure up. We don't fit in. We're observable and noticeable and therefore we are judgeable.
Able to be judged.
Unable to care.
Less than. Equal to.
If we had no neighbors, I rationalize in the fever of my comfortable irrationality, whom may we be judged against? No one. We are our own yardstick. And with it we cannot be punished.
The dog is asleep right now, lovingly nuzzling an assuredly aromatic oven mit. Soon, I will dutifully take her out to see and be seen. She's a chick magnet, but I'm married, and the chicks she attracts are over sixty and are silently sending me to hell because our plastic, drug store porch chairs haven't been washed since last summer.
Thanks, Tenny. Good girl.
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