2002-10-15 - 9:46 p.m.
Our neighbor across the street always stops to exchange a few words with us as we are coming or going.... we have never visited with him anywhere but in the street, but we have developed quite a lively street friendship over the years. He is a retired teacher and lives alone, really kind of a curmudgeon in some ways but also very good hearted. Sometimes when we forget to trim our grass out in front of the fence, we will come home and find it all done. We have bonded with Jed over the problems with noisy tenants in the rental houses, and usually our conversation goes to the atrocities committed by some new batch of renters on our block. Jed isn't afraid to let them know when he disapproves of their behavior. Once when he caught a couple of youthful partiers having sex right under his window, he opened up the window and poured water on them.
The other day he told us that the guy who was painting the house next door had looked over the fence and informed him that his nicely landscaped back yard was a "chick magnet." And we all had to have a chuckle about that because Jed is gay, and as he put it, "That's not exactly what I had in mind."
So then he tells us about getting hustled at the gym. And the hustler says, in response to a question about his livelihood: You gotta do what you gotta do. Jed says he had almost forgotten that was a "code" phrase they use. For some reason that phrase has stuck in my mind, and I keep imagining the world in which one would use it. A world that barely brushes against mine.
We stumbled into another foreign world on Sunday afternoon. It was a perfect fall day and we wanted to get out and do something. Skootie was still trying to finish her paper, but she needed some books, so we decided to walk to the library, a round trip of about four miles. As we walked on the sidewalk following the narrow river that flows through the center of the city, we rounded a corner and found ourselves in the middle of a large group of people. A voice was blaring from a loudspeaker, and people were clogging the sidewalk, making progress impossible. Looking around us at the "Mission From God" t-shirts we soon realized we were surrounded by some sort of religious demonstration. Because of the location (beside the water) there was no place to go except to walk along with them for a few minutes until we reached a point where we could cross the street. Skootie and I had the same thought, when we compared notes later: Please, don't let anyone see me. It felt kind of like being a teenager again. (Please don't let any of the popular kids see me with my parents on Saturday night.) As soon as we got to a street, we made a break for it. "Stay on the sidewalk!" they barked at us, thinking we were members of the flock, breaking the rules of religious marching. But we ran across the street anyway, and they had to acknowledge we were lost.
Well, I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.
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