My neighborhood–as I have indicated in many, many previous blog posts–is weird.
But forget all the lawn panties, the stoned joggers, the barbershops that are frequently under new management, the contantly-watching-me apartment dwellers, and the many, many questionable decisions regarding yard decor: my neighborhood has now officially gained its weirdest thing yet.
By which I mean, my sister and her husband bought a house down the street.
Very conveniently, the house they chose is exactly halfway between my house and the train station, directly across the street from my little buddy’s. This was a total coincidence, since their real estate agent (who is a friend of theirs AND mine) showed them the listing, and they liked it, well before any of them looked closely at the address and figured out it was a four minute walk from my driveway to theirs.
This seems like the ideal distance apart. I have a cousin who bought the house next door to her parents, and while that would be awesome in a lot of ways–especially when there are small children in the mix–I feel like I would be living in constant fear of judgement if my relatives could see in my windows from their windows. I have lived by myself, with no roommates, since I was 22, and that’s a lot of years to have literally no one to keep your bad habits in check. Before anyone is allowed to enter my house unannounced, I have to do a quick mental inventory of whether there is are any weird piles of nonsense strewn about that I have been ignoring (it’s incredibly easy to ignore a mess when it’s entirely your own). So the possibility of having someone drop by at any given moment of the day would be terrifying.
A block-and-a-half walk, though, requires at least a nominal level of commitment (and, you know, at least some pants). But I don’t expect that distance to preclude ALL unprompted visits, especially where my brother-in-law is involved, as he’s an all-caps EXTROVERT. He has already threatened to show up unbidden on my lawn on a Saturday morning with snacks.
(I have decided that I will forgive him for this an unspecified number of times, should it actually happen, before I begin politely telling him to knock it off.)
I reminded my sister and brother-in-law that the dropping in unexpectedly can work both ways, and may have implied that I could theoretically break in at 3 AM to leave them baked goods. Unfortunately, this will not be possible, as their home security system is far more robust than mine. My home security system consists of the following: the unofficial neighborhood watch, also known as the apartment building tenants across the street who spend roughly 40% of their day sitting in lawn chairs on their patios staring at the front of my house; and my neighbor Beard’s tiny, paranoid yip-yip dog, whose superhuman senses allow it to detect and bark repeatedly at, from Beard’s yard, a fart being emitted INSIDE MY HOUSE. Between these two things, I’m actually pretty secure.
There is a downside to this arrangement, though, and it’s this: over the years, it’s become pretty apparent that it’s not just the apartment dwellers that are watching me constantly. Everyone in the neighborhood seems to know who I am, where I live, what times of day I’m walking to and from the train station, and what state of disrepair my yard is currently in. (Especially after yesterday.) It has already attracted attention that I’ve been marching up and down the block quite a lot more than usual, helping my sister and brother-in-law get settled.
If it’s gonna happen anyway…I’ve started to realize that I at least have the power to make it interesting.
The idea began on the day of the closing on the house–my parents and I were invited to celebrate my sister and brother-in-law’s new homeownership with socially distanced pizza on the back porch. The official move hadn’t happened yet, though, so we weren’t sure what the patio furniture situation would be. “I have two folding chairs,” I volunteered. “I could bring them.”
“Maybe you don’t want to be walking down the block with a folding chair under each arm,” my mom suggested.
I almost asked why not, before I realized she was talking about the neighbors noticing.
It suddenly occurred to me that, if I was so inclined, this sister-down-the-street thing would be a FANTASTIC excuse to mess with the nosy neighbors.
As I mentioned yesterday, my bathroom is currently under construction, leaving me without a shower of my own to use for bits of this week, but I now conveniently have a sister just up the street who volunteered the use of hers. “I’m hoping I don’t have to,” I said. “It would be awkward to walk down the street carrying, like, my shampoo and stuff…”
My sister looked at me like I was bonkers. “Just drive your car.”
“It’s a block and a half,” I insisted. “It’s silly to drive a block and a half.”
“You could just put all your stuff in a bag, you know,” she pointed out.
“Where’s the fun in that?” I asked. “I know the whole neighborhood’s watching me anyway. I might as well make it interesting for them.”
When I reiterated this discussion to my mom later, she had the exact same thought that I had also had and expressed to my sister: “If you’re going to entertain the neighbors, you should go all out. Wear a bathrobe and slippers, throw a towel over your shoulder…”
Now that I have this opportunity to be the talk of the neighborhood, though, I can’t help but want to share the wealth with my newest neighbors. I’ve already given my sister some ideas, though I think they’ve been poorly received. My first inspiration came during the house showing, when the real estate agent’s wife (another good friend of ours, who was a bridesmaid in my sister’s wedding) pointed out that the only thing the previous residents had left behind was an adult-sized, frilly and poofy, glitter-covered witch costume.
“You’re gonna need to find reasons to wear this,” she told my sister.
“I can tell you exactly when,” I said, an idea forming in my mind. “Here’s what you do: for the first few weeks you live here, you open all the windows, blast some creepy organ music, put on that dress and just stand silhouetted in the upstairs window for a little while every night.”
“I will not be doing that,” my sister said. “Why do I get the feeling you want the neighborhood to think the house is haunted so that we have to stay here forever?”
Whatever would have given her that idea?
Laura Writes 