The day the neighbors set their house on fire

I didn't always live in this town. I'm from a very, very small town about two hours north of here, and when I say "small town", I mean we had a population of MAYBE 200, and that's if you included all the stray cats and maybe the family of turkeys that lived in the swamp adjacent to our yard for several summers. I grew up on a dirt road, across the street from a cemetery, and the most exciting thing that ever happened was when the neighbor's dogs would break out of their pen and poop in our yard. No joke.

When I moved here a year ago, it was a bit of a culture shock. This town...it's something else, and that's not always a good thing. My hometown had its fair share of morons, certainly, but around here that number is probably closer to 95% of the population. I cannot go even a single day without someone, somewhere, doing something incredibly stupid. Even if I don't leave the house, someone walking down the street will be doing something that makes me wonder if they left the house without their common sense. 

Like the day the neighbors set their house on fire.

It started out like any other normal Sunday. The housemates were at church, I had showered and was puttering around the kitchen waiting for the water to boil for my ramen noodles (breakfast of champions, eh?). The window above the sink offers a view of part of our street, and as I stood there washing the dishes I happened to look up and I saw a fire truck sitting in the street. I didn't hear any sirens, but I tend to listen to music very loudly when I do the dishes, so that was no surprise.

Being the curious individual that I am, I of course went to go stare out the front window to see what was going on. By the time I got to the front of the house there was a total of three firetrucks and one ambulance sitting in the street. The house across the street and to the right of ours had a cloud of dark smoke billowing out one of the back windows, and the occupants of the house were standing in their driveway, staring at the firemen as they rushed inside carrying the big giant hose. 

It must not have been a very large fire, because the majority of firemen that had arrived were standing in the street, blocking traffic, hands on their hips and trying to look super important. The fire chief (according to the name on the back of his jacket, at least) was right in the middle of things, pointing furiously at nothing in particular and looking a bit like a maestro in a large yellow coat. 

It didn't take long for the fire to be put out, maybe 20 minutes or so total before the firemen starting coiling up the hose and taking off, one truck at a time. Nobody was injured, because the ambulance left without ever treating anyone. 

Now, I can't assume what happened. I never heard any details, and I will never know for sure what went on across the street that morning. However, considering that just the night before the police had been called to that same exact house on a domestic disturbance call and nearly arrested one of the guys that either lived in the house or was at least dating someone else that lived there, I can't help but wonder if maybe the fire wasn't entirely an accident. I don't see the point in setting a fire, on purpose, in a house you're renting and don't even own, but I'm not an idiot either. It seems awfully suspicious though, but I suppose I will have to go through life without ever knowing what really went on at the house across the street that morning.

The house has been empty since the fire. Since the people that lived there had about 306 kids that all spent a lot of time outside, screaming for absolutely no reason, it's been very quiet since they moved out.

I don't really miss the neighbors much at all.

Sincerely,

Smart Girl.

Parking. It's not for everyone.

I will never, ever, not in a million years, understand how some people in this country ever get their driver's license. I admit to knocking over a few cones when I (very, very badly) attempted the parallel parking section on my driving test, but I at least have some common sense. I also have the ability to read. My mommy done learned me good.

The people of this town, though... I hated driving before I moved here. Driving is something I did to get to work, not something I did just for the fun of it. Driving makes me very angry, not to the point of ramming into people with my car, but definitely angry enough to scream obscenities at the imbeciles I'm forced to share the asphalt with, even if they can't hear me. STOP SIGNS ARE FOR STOPPING, YOU IDIOT! Oh, hey, no, you don't need to use your blinker because LET ME READ YOUR DAMN MIND!!

You get the idea.

Imagine my surprise when I moved here and discovered that not only can people suck at driving, but they can also suck at parking. I always thought it would be difficult to be terrible at something that involves your vehicle not moving at all. Who knew?

I used to think signs that proclaim, in plain bold English, NO PARKING AT ANY TIME were fairly easy to understand. I mean, you really only need two words, NO and PARKING. Even backwards they still make sense if you add a little punctuation: Parking? NO! Around here those signs are like an unspoken challenge. There's a no-parking sign just down the block from my house that's been spray-painted in a pathetic attempt to make it unreadable, which of course didn't work, because not only can people not figure out how to stop their cars intelligently (not operate the car, just stop the damn thing from moving), they can't even work a can of spray paint. Big surprise, no?

The house across the street (yes, the same one where Pregnant Man lives) has one of those new-fangled "No Parking" signs directly in front of the house. Not out of the ordinary when you realize that entire side of the street doesn't allow parking. And yet, at least two or three times per day (or five or six times a day sometimes) there's a car parked in front of the house, in front of the damned no-parking sign. *sigh*

The list of Pregnant Man's superpowers got a little shorter when he lost the power of reading comprehension.

If this is my last post, it's because I've died ramming my car into the horde of idiots.

Sincerely,

Smart Girl.

The Amazing Adventures of Pregnant Man

There is a house almost directly across the street from mine. On the outside, this house looks pretty average. Pale yellow, well taken care of, nothing that might catch your eye at first glance.

That is, until you catch a glimpse of the people that live inside this house, one man in particular.

The housemates and I have dubbed him 'Pregnant Man'. Not to be rude, but because his stomach sticks out a ridiculous amount and is perfectly rounded, like he's either 9 months pregnant or smuggling an over-inflated basketball under his shirt. I've seen him sans shirt. There's no basketball.

Pregnant Man is one of those people that just doesn't seem to grasp the concept of common sense. He owns a bike (again, not unusual), but in the last year that I've lived in this house I've seen him actually RIDE said bike maybe three or four times. Pregnant Man apparently just likes to take his bike for a walk, like a normal person would do with their dogs. I see him leave the house, bike in tow, walking down the street like he's just going for a casual stroll. Sometimes I see him on his way back home, still rolling the bike along beside him, plodding slowly up the sidewalk. I don't get it.

Pregnant Man's lone superpower seems to be the ability to be a huge, giant creep. I admit I like to watch people like some people like to watch birds, because people do weird things and it makes me laugh. Pregnant Man, though, he's just a creep. He likes to stand out on his front porch and just stare at people as they walk down the sidewalk. Actually it's not so much a stare as it is a leer, which is especially disturbing when it's a woman walking down the street. Nothing makes you feel so attractive as having a balding 50+ year old man, whose stomach precedes him into rooms by at least a week, staring at you without blinking. Way to go, man. Way to go.

Occasionally Pregnant Man spends time on his porch without staring at people. I've witnessed him come out the door, belch loud enough to hear from across the street, and then go right back inside. Total time spent outside: less than 10 seconds. That was a good day. Sometimes he comes out, goes down the porch steps, stands on the sidewalk for a few seconds, and then goes back up the steps and back into the house. I have no idea what he's looking for, what he expects to see, if he's waiting for someone...I don't even have any theories because it's just too damn weird.

Maybe I just spend way too much of my free time staring out the living room window, watching the house across the street, but it never fails to disappoint. There's ALWAYS something interesting, even if sometimes 'interesting' really means 'disturbing'.

Sincerely,

Smart Girl

There's this thing called a 'belt'. Maybe you should look into acquiring one of those.

I've never understood this fashion trend that's been popping up more and more as of late. I mean, there's really nothing attractive about the waistband of your pants sagging down below your butt-cheeks. Unless you're wearing Batman underpants, I don't particularly feel like looking at your tighty-whities (because boxers ruin the look of pants-below-your-ass, apparently). Wearing your pants that low doesn't make you a bad-ass, and it doesn't make you cool, it just makes you look like maybe you should ask your mommy if she can pick out your outfits for you every morning because you're incapable of dressing yourself.

The part that really gets me, though, is the guys that wear skinny jeans way down below their cheeks. And then, of course, since they're skinny jeans, it makes it hard to walk, and then the guys that are trying SO HARD to look and act all gangster have to waddle down the sidewalk like a penguin. I can't not laugh at them; it's physically impossible for me not to crack up when I spy them, no matter if it's in the middle of Target or just someone on the sidewalk as I drive past.

I see a LOT of this around here. Sometimes on my day off I open the curtains in our living room window and just watch the people go by. More often than not, it's some young guy in his 20's, wearing his baseball cap sideways, pants down around his knees, slouching down the sidewalk with loud rap music blaring from the tiny speaker on his cell phone. Dude, your terrible taste in music only serves to mirror your terrible taste in fashion. Please, do us all a favor; invest in some headphones, and PULL UP YOUR DAMN PANTS.

Sincerely,

Smart Girl.