The Neighbors

I am a people watcher. I may have picked up the practice from my Dad. I remember when I was a kid going to lunch with him in the summer. We would get our fast food and he would then drive us to the local public pool. We would sit in the car in the pool parking lot next to the pool fence and eat. While I was engrossed in my food, Dad would be engrossed in the pool activity. I always thought there was something a bit perverse and voyeuristic about this practice, but it was also fun and funny to watch half naked people interact at the swimming pool. I always liked it when the life guard would get into it with a seven year old over the pool rules. The life guard was inevitably a high school sophomore that thought he was the local swimming pool god and the seven year olds at the pool would invariably try to undermine his alleged authority. Dad, however, seemed to be looking at something else. It was kind of disturbing and I will not go into, suffice it to say we were not watching the same things.

I still watch. People are fascinating. Say what you will, I like to watch people. I like to imagine their life stories. to pick up clues as to who they are and what they do and whether they are happy, or angst filled or depressed or whatever. It is the soap opera in my mind and it's better than TV. Today I am at a local lake contemplating some fishing and watching people as I type this stuff. I also frequent grocery store parking lots, fast food restaurants and coffee shops to watch the human drama. I can't seem to get enough of it. Finding a place to sit and watch on a cool day at the Iowa State Fair is another favorite. That's next month.

And that brings me to my neighbors. Some of you know that I moved back to my townhouse on the south side that I left 7 years ago. I am glad I did not sell it. I enjoy this little community where all the homes are exactly alike and all the people are completely different. To sit on my porch and watch in the early evening; that is one of my great pleasures. You can hear 4 or 5 different languages spoken as people groups walk by on the sidewalk. You can see men holding hands and rednecks with their confederate flag t-shirts and African Americans listening to rap. We are a very mixed group and I have invented life stories for all of them in my head. I will not testify to the reality of my head based drama, but I am to the point where I would like to test if my perceptions are anywhere near correct.

My next door neighbor is a single foster mother. She came home with her foster son before I moved out. I do not believe he was more than 7 years old at the time. When I moved back, he had become a young man that needs to shave and his mother seems daily frustrated by the fact that he does not take care of himself. One day he locked her out of the house. She sat outside in her lawn chair talking to him through an open window. He eventually let her back in the house, but the through the window conversation centered around her son's need for privacy. In my head, I imagined that she had found his porn stash and so the battle ensued.

My neighbor across the street is single. She likes my flowers. She moved into the hood in May. She is close to my age, but still works. Her children and grandchildren visit her with great regularity as does a man about my age with Warren county plates on his cars. I imagine this is her brother. I further imagine that she is divorced, that her husband left her for a younger woman or man and that the bitterness of this has all passed. I also think she is a nurse....she just seems like a nurse to me.

Another neighbor across the street that moved in back in May spent a great deal of time remodeling the place before he took up residence. He's about 26 years old, seems to be in a security oriented occupation and carries a hand gun. He is a single father of a son not more than 4 years old. His son is currently not with him. I assume he went to spend the summer with Mom in some other place not close to Iowa. He also has regular visitors. Two young females will show up at his house, sometimes with a baby that's not quite 2 years old. Sometimes they will leave the baby with him. I believe that one of the young women is his sister and the other a friend of both and that he baby sits for them. From what I've seen he seems to be a good father and a good friend. I gave him my old lawn chairs and table for his front porch and told him he could use them until he found something he really wanted. He still has not replaced them.

He also has something close to a complete gym in his garage; weight machines, free weights and a heavy bag that I have seen him beat the crap out of on several occasions. It is my guess that he is ex-military, that he was never married to the mother of his son and that he may have met her while serving somewhere.

On my side of the street next door to the foster mother is a corner unit that was purchased and occupied in June. Two young men moved in and set up housekeeping. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that they were newlyweds buying their first house, but this may not be the case. One of them could be the owner renting space to a friend or they could be two straight single guys buying a house together and building equity rather than paying rent. The possibilities are endless and they seem entirely mismatched if they are a couple. They do things together, mainly bicycle riding and I have never seen them touch each other. One of them is about 6'4" and weighs about 190 lbs with black hair and a scruffy beard. I believe he is Asian, but it's hard to tell with his thick glasses. The other one is about 5'9" and weighs about 135 lb. He has no facial hair at all, is Caucasian and blond.

The blond has a personality and a sense of humor. He drives a black KIA Soul and was in the driveway washing it last night when I came home from Redfield. I asked him if it was a good idea to wash his Soul right out in the open like that and he started laughing and said that someone had to do it. I said that it must be hard to keep such a dark Soul clean. Again laughing, he said, 'who are you' to which I said, 'I'm your neighbor' and walked away to take my groceries inside. his roomate is a dullard by comparison, creepy quiet and Aspie like in his demeanor.

Next door to my security oriented neighbor lives an old lady. I say old. She's about my age. She lived there before I left and she was still there when I came back. We all believe she has a direct line to the home shopping network. UPS and USPS stop at her place almost daily with packages. She cannot park in her garage because it is stacked floor to ceiling with these boxes. I imagine that she is a hoarder. I envision her living space clogged with stacks of coveted items she never uses and well worn paths through the house for her and her two yappy dogs that seem to hate everyone except her. She has also been trying to get every one's voting proxies for HOA meetings without success. Not sure what she's up to there, but we may find out. I did not give her mine.

When I lived there before, I did not go to the HOA meetings because I was working. Now that I am retired, I may take an interest. It could well be time to overthrow the existing council and take over. It would be a good way to see if my assumptions about my neighbors are correct. It would also be a superior position from whence to watch my neighbors and interact with them. I kind of want this. We will see.