Welcome To My Neighborhood!

What happens when you have tight walls, a basement dweller, a club mommy, a coochie flasher, a Mother of the Year who’s child failed Kindergarten, ding dong ditchers, a rabid Nickleback fan, hypocrites and Canadians? You have my neighborhood. I don’t live in a major city, but just outside of one, I live in the suburbs.

A few years ago my wife and I decided that she should try to pursue her fashion buying career outside of Richmond, VA. Because when you think of fashion, Richmond is not on the top of the list. She sent out resume after resume. Finally a major company called and said they would like to interview her. They fly her out to their Chicago headquarters and a few weeks later they call her to make an offer. She accepts. I make the call to our Real Estate agent, the house goes on the market and within two weeks our house is sold. The problem now is, we don’t have a place to live. The company wanted her to start work almost immediately. She leaves for Chicago, I stay behind with the children.

Besides starting a new job, living in a new place, trying to get her bearings straight, she also has to find a home. We were assigned a Realtor and he took her around and around and around. After two weeks it was time for me to make my presence. I get on a flight, come to Chicago, meet with the Realtor and decide that he was an idiot. We looked at several houses, decided on one and put a contract on it. I tell him that we need an answer within twenty four hours and he tells me “we don’t do things like that here in Chicago, we put the time is of the essence.” We go back and forth about what time is to different people and made the decision, in the eleventh hour, on a Saturday night, to fire him. This should have been my first warning, but I ignored it.

We searched the Internet from the extended stay hotel where my wife was temporarily residing, we even got old school and took out the phone book. We found a real estate office in the town we wanted to live in and see that they opened at nine, on a Sunday. Hallelujah! We met with an agent, give her our parameters, explained what happened and told her in a sarcastic tone that time is of the essence. She agreed, drove us around and the last house we saw was according to her, in a great neighborhood, lots of kids and families. I’m not sure if was out of desperation or the giant master bedroom or maybe a combination of both. But we decided to put a contract on the house and less than twenty four hours later the owners, a relocation company, countered. The negotiations went on for about a week and then finally a price was agreed upon. We had a deal. Little did I know this would be my season in purgatory.

It was early November and everything was set, the movers were scheduled and the closing date confirmed. We were sad to leave Virginia but excited to live outside of Chicago. After two days of traveling I finally see the Chicago skyline. We make it to the hotel we were going to stay at for a night or two. The following day we do a walk through of the house and head over to the closing. The closing took forever, I was getting frustrated, my kids were getting hungry, I just wanted this to be over and done with. All the signatures were gathered and we now legally resided in Illinois. The movers were scheduled to be there first thing the following morning. We were all tired and had dinner and laid down to sleep. The next day was going to be interesting.

We get to the new house before the movers. We open the door, let the kids run around and unleash the dogs to let them get acclimated to their new surroundings. I was just waiting for them to mark their territory. Some people give you a candle as a housewarming gift, dogs crap and piss on your rug. We had many housewarming gifts the first few days. I hate housewarming gifts.

The movers took almost no time to get our belongings into our house. It also took no time for a neighbor to pop her head in the open door and say hi, we live next door, welcome to the neighborhood. She seemed nice enough, and very peppy, but to pop your head in while the movers are bringing stuff into a house seems a bit premature. Hi, now get out is what I was thinking, but you really can’t say that to a new neighbor or can you? She leaves and my wife and I look at each other puzzled, remembering that no one in Virginia came over to our house for at least a week, we were a bit taken aback. Was this a good thing or a bad thing, only time would tell.

Unpacking anything, unless it’s a gift, is not fun by any means. Deciding on where to hang pictures, candles, vases, books and placement of furniture is not at the top of my favorite pastimes. It’s between standing in line a the DMV and having a tube shoved down your pee hole. At least when you’re at line at the DMV you know there is an end to it. Not like unpacking, where boxes seem to magically appear after a few months. We unpacked, hung the pictures, changed the light fixtures, made trips to the home improvement stores and were making our new house our own.

It was unseasonably warm for this time of year, kids were still playing outside and the lawn still needed to be cut. One day from across the street came over who I call the club mommy, introduced herself and her children. She was in her early to mid thirties, tall, blondish hair, trendy glasses and was dressed like she was ready to go to a club, a BeBe shirt that was almost to tight, trendy Capri’s and almost stripper heels. I was thinking, does she really dress like this all the time, or just when she wants to make a first impression? Her name was Suzie and her husbands name is Bill. I could tell right off the bat that she was the social butterfly, but I wasn’t sure on who’s social calendar, again she seemed nice enough, she had a son my kids age so that’s good, right? As for Bill, he was a mystery to us. Only catching glimpses of him going to and from work.

After Suzie made first contact, the rest of the neighborhood must have decided it was OK to talk to us. We’d all say hi, tell them where we were from, both recently and originally. I had so many questions about the town. Places to go, things to do and restaurants, more specifically pizza places, this was Chicago, sort of. And every time I asked about a restaurant, I received a different answer. What? This was a town of less than thirty thousand people and less than ten miles in diameter, with more pizza places then there should be. We took every one’s and decided that they didn’t know shit about pizza. And there was warning number two, but I ignored it.

New Year’s Eve was just around the corner and club mommy Suzie, the Canadian and several other neighbors were having a little get together and invited us. We said sure, we can get our drink on and meet some of the other neighbors. And meet them we did. Bill finally made an appearance away from his house and cave of knowledge. That’s what I described his basement, he worked from home and would only watch educational programming and listen to books on tape, but not fiction. He would listen to titles that were far from the norm. The history of Mesopotamia and other how to put you to sleep titles that I had no intention of remembering. Then there was Dean, the aging guido with his too black hair and gold rope chain complete with Italian Horn and Crucifix and his wife Leslie who looked as if she just stepped out of a Bon Jovi concert, in nineteen eighty six with big frosted hair and the accessories to match. Which I also learned that evening that they sleep in separate bedrooms, and he drinks as if Armageddon was near. There was Ben the Canadians husband, who is what I can only describe as genuinely nice. We also met Terry and Rob. They had three boys and were the epitome of mid west rednecks. They asked if we put our children in sports and I told them not yet, considering my son was only four years old at the time. Her response was well “sports are more important than school here, you really should think about it.” And there was warning number three. The winter finally arrived and socially we went into hibernation.

The spring arrived and the kids had cabin fever. The weather was getting warmer and daylight longer, we were longing to be outside, having a cold beer and good conversation, that’s what we became accustomed to in Virginia. But not here, no one here had a front porch, so we made do by hanging out in the driveway. It became the meeting place for some of the neighbors, we would hang out drink beer and talk. If it went a little further into the evening we would usually end up at Suzie and Bill’s backyard.

When the alcohol was full throttle, it was like a shot of asshole serum. Dean, the guido, is a heavy drinker, has had so many DUI’s he’d once had a breathalyzer installed in his car. He has one of the best personality traits ever, he has an opinion about everything. He tried to convince you that everything he did, ate, listened to and watched was the best. He was the best at his job, he could do whatever he wanted. “I could go tell the boss to go fuck himself, but I’m so good at what I do I won’t get fired. They need me there, they know that.” Thanks Col. Markinson for making that abundantly clear. You’re the best, we need you to be the best drunk on the block you can be.

Another famous Dean moment is how he got the nickname Tight Walls. It was a summer evening, and the party started without me, I was working. I had no intentions of hanging out on the other end of the block but Bill was out and that was a rare treat. I’ve learned that he and Ben were the only two people I could converse with without wanting to rip my ears off. Everyone was well on their way to drunksville, so I decided to play catch up. I walk down the street and see Dean talking to my wife, Bill and Rob. Dean tells me “he finished doing his basement”.

“Great!” I say, as I know where this is going.

“It took longer than I wanted, but you should see the walls, I did it all myself, the walls are tight! You know how on some walls you can see the seams?” Dean says with the bravado backed by Jim Beam.

“That’s great.” Bill says with a chuckle.

“Wow.” Says the mid west redneck Rob. Who always had a one word response. Always. Every time we asked him what he does for a living, he looks at you like a deer in an eighteen wheelers headlights, then changes the subject about what he used to do. To this day I have no idea.

Dean chimes in “Seriously, they are the tightest walls you’ve ever seen. I sanded and primed and sanded so you can’t see the seams, those walls are tight.”

“Dean that’s great, you must feel really proud of your walls.” I sarcastically retort.

“Oh you have no idea, these are the best walls, they’re tight, you know what I mean, when you put your face against the wall and look down the wall, you don’t see any seams. They’re tight.”

“Yes, I got that already, you have tight walls” Bill says annoyed, he turns to walk away. My wife had already left to go talk with Suzie and Leslie. Just when I thought the night couldn’t get any more annoying, I hear the band Nickleback thumping down the street. Now I don’t mind Nickleback, but the whole album blaring out of a giant SUV at midnight on a residential street, not so much. The owner of this gas guzzling single album jukebox comes over and starts to talk to Dean, who in my mind is now known as Tight Walls. I decide it’s time to leave, there’s only so much asshole I can take in one evening. So for all the right reasons I didn’t take the long way home.

Over time, we also learned that Rob and Terry didn’t know how to supervise their children. Would you let your five year old run around the neighborhood at ten in the evening by themselves? I didn’t think so, but they do. They also allow their children to stay home from school if they don’t feel like going. It was so bad that their youngest failed Kindergarten, how do you fail Lincoln Logs and nap time? He had to go to summer school, for Kindergarten. So I nicknamed her Mother of the Year. Their middle son is the king of ding dong ditch. I told him that if he ever did it again I’ll bring him back to his house and tell his parents. That apparently scared him as much as the dark scares a ghost, none. There was another time that the middle son was about to egg our neighbors house. He had a carton of eggs in his arm and I asked him what he was going to do, he looks at me and says “Nuthin’”

“Well it looks like you’re gong to do something you shouldn’t be doing and if you do throw one of those eggs it will be the last thing you do with your right hand. So turn around go back home and put those eggs back in you refrigerator. NOW!” I demanded. He turned around and started walking home and as he was passing I also told him “Ring my doorbell one more time, you’ll regret it.” To this day we have not had any ding ding ditching done to our house.

We found ourselves outside less and less. I’m not one to pretend to be nice, either I like you or I don’t. And if I don’t like you or feel that I really don’t have anything in common with you, other than breathing I keep my distance. We still talked to club mommy and the cave dweller, but distanced ourselves from almost everyone else. Club mommy being the neighborhood gossip that she was, told us a story about Leslie. They were at a pool party on the other end of the subdivision and Leslie got so drunk that she was flashing her nether regions, yelling she wasn’t getting any. Need I say more?

The Canadians moved back to Canada. Club mommy and Cave dweller moved to Texas. We were now left to deal with Mother of the Year, Tight Walls and Coochie Flasher all by ourselves. Great. We come to find out that Club Mommy’s house was sold but the contract fell through because there was a dead possum found on the stairs, that must have gotten in through the doggie door, during the final walk through. Another month goes by and another contract is put on the house. No dead animals prevented the sale and we had new neighbors. We couldn’t wait. We learned from our realtor, who represented the sellers, that they were relocating from Wisconsin and had a son close to our son’s age. We were hoping they were somewhat normal.

They moved in and initially we kept our distance, we didn’t want to be all in their face the moment they moved in. The next thing we saw was sir ding dong ditch is over there talking to the mother of the house. He then goes on his not so merry way. Days go by and we get to know the new neighbors and they asked us if “everyone was strange at the other end of the street?”

“We really don’t socialize with them, so I would say yes.”

“Is it true that there was a dead possum in our house?” she asked bluntly.

“Yes, how did you find out?” I ask.

“One of the boys from down the street told me on the day that we moved in. He and his brother come here all the time unannounced to play with my son and then ask for lunch. Their mom also told me that sports is really big here, you really need to get your son involved.”

I chuckled sarcastically “Welcome to the neighborhood.”

We were getting along great. The children played together, we hung out, shared beer and swapped stories, everything seemed fine. Until one day and it’s always that one day isn’t it. Her son is into Star Wars and Legos. He is an only child and has every Lego you could possible imagine. He played the Wii and had all the Star Wars Lego game, that he insisted was his favorite. Now, if you’ve never played a Lego themed video game I have a bit of explaining to do. Legos snap together and break apart, if you have a Lego character with a body and a head , the head and limbs pop off. Now that you know the basic science of Legos, let me continue.

It was the beginning of the school year and the children in his class got to take home a book for a reading assignment. Now I don’t remember the name of the book but I do remember the plot. It was a scary-what-lives-in-the-closet type of book. She asked me at the bus stop if my “son has ever read it.” She looked a bit upset.

I said “I don’t recall, but what’s the problem?”

“This book is not age appropriate, it has words like decapitation and other violent words. Do you think I should email the teacher?” She was looking for validation, unfortunately she was looking in the wrong place.

“No, but that’s your decision as his parent. I wouldn’t, but that’s just me. I mean he plays Star Wars Legos on the Wii, there’s enough violence on that and all the characters get decapitated” I explain.

“Well it’s not the same thing.” She huffed.

For me that was it, there are two things that I don’t tolerate, hypocrisy and ignorance. How can you be offended by words, but not by something visual? It makes no sense. Why not open up a discussion with your children about those words and actions? That’s what I do and hope more parents would do the same. Some days I think about making a short bus tour, which would be on a short bus of course, of the most ridiculous neighborhood on the planet. Where else could you see Tight Walls, Flashing Coochies, a Mother of the Year and Canadians, all with the soundtrack provided by Nickleback? Other than my neighborhood? Nowhere.