There's this guy who lives across the street who's a bit of an oddball. And I should stress that there's nothing wrong with being an oddball. He may be a little autistic. He rarely comes outside and when he wanders over to our porch we never know what kind of weirdness is going to come out of his mouth. Not scary or threatening weirdness - just thinking and behavior that makes us shake our heads afterwards. Sometimes I think something but I don't say what I'm thinking because I know it would elicit some head-shaking from whoever I was talking to. Sometimes I say it anyway just to elicit some head-shaking. Usually, however and for instance, I don't bring up my suspicion that the rocks in my cactus garden are talking to the palm trees. I certainly don't share the details of the conversations that I eavesdrop on. I mean it is my cactus garden. If the rocks and the plants don't want me to hear what they're talking about they should wait until I go to bed or turn out the lights. I drive right by the garden when I leave the house. It's not too hard to figure out a good time to chat privately.
In the summer we have a little patio out back that is shielded from the sun. In the winter the front porch is warm and sunny, the place to be. We move back and forth for reasons of comfort, mostly. The front porch, however, is exposed to the street and this makes us easily accessible to people passing by. Sometimes I don't mind this. Often I'd prefer my interactions to be along the line of "hi how ya doin'?" with the subtext being "I'm reading so I'd prefer that you just keep moving along." It's nothing personal. It's not that I don't want to talk to you. It's that I don't want to talk to anyone. I'm reading. SuperK and our neighbor were chatting one day and he asked if the reason we hadn't been using the front porch for a while was because of him. My wife gave him a hug and explained the logistics of our outside time, amazed at how easily we turn our attention on ourselves. I used to think that there were a billion people in China thinking about me. This made sense to me. Who else would they be thinking about?
No one is thinking about me! No one is doing anything to me!
Here's the flip side of the coin. The people who live right across the street from us - interestingly enough, also oddballs but my kind of oddballs because they leave me alone - had some medical stuff going on that resulted in a bunch of trips to a variety of hospitals and emergency rooms. When they returned in the early evening after what I was sure were a couple of grueling days I strolled across the street and checked in with them. This couple is very private, rarely leaving their house which I learned was sort of stuffed pretty full with stuff and junk when I tried to hand over a package that had been mistakenly delivered to our house. Even as a obsessive-compulsive, anal-retentive neat freak I could care less what their house looks like. Anyway, the dude who was having the medical challenges came over and hugged SuperK one afternoon and told us how much they had appreciated our concern. I see how little it takes to make a difference in someone's life. I see if I get my head out of my ass - it doesn't even have to be all the way out of my ass, just halfway out is a big improvement - I can make a real difference.
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