Occasionally you can turn to your neighbors when you need help. In the past, my parents' neighbors were always really helpful when it came to things like dog-sitting, house-sitting, and the like. Our neighbors now, however...nowhere near as helpful.
Last weekend my brother and my sister-in-law rented a Uhaul truck so we could move some furniture and things from my sis-in-law's parents, who are currently in the process of moving from Michigan to Florida. I wasn't there for the loading of the truck, but I can assume it was probably along the lines of people packing boxes, carrying them to the truck, then putting the boxes in the truck, and repeating that process until the truck was full. Pretty simple, right?
The unloading of the truck, however, was much more...entertaining? Obnoxious? I'm really not even sure which word I want to use.
Before I go further, I should probably explain that somewhere around a few months ago our wonderful neighbor Pregnant Man got a new neighbor. I say 'neighbor' in the sense that they live in the same house, and I'm pretty sure that house has been split into apartments judging by the four different doorbells beside the front door. The new guy, we'll call him R, does NOT, in ANY way, give off an aura of intelligence. A couple times he caught us on our way into our house, shouting at us from the curb where he was getting either in or out of the vehicle he no longer owns. He's so far introduced himself to me at least 4 times, although it wasn't until the whole unpacking fiasco that I actually learned his name. Usually the introductions consisted of him shouting "Hey there! I just moved into the neighborhood!", even though the 'just' was about 2 months before. Again, R is not the sharpest crayon in the box.
So. On that fateful Saturday when my brother and I were carrying some things from the Uhaul to the house, R and some other guys pull up in front of our house and park in the space that's not actually a space that comes about 6 inches from blocking our neighbors driveway. R climbs out of the car, staring at us like we're doing something he's never seen before, then shouts at us, asking if we want some 'free help'. Sorry, it's not like we would pay him anyway. My brother shruggingly shouts back something along the lines of "Sure, if you want to," and then R shouts back that he'll be out to help us in a minute. Turns out he had to go inside to get a back brace that in the end did him absolutely no good. He proceeds to come across the street and clambers into the back of the truck. My brother somehow talks him into helping him carry an incredibly bulky piece of furniture (I forget exactly what it was, but it doesn't really matter). I suppose that in the end having another man to carry the heaviest thing in the truck was probably a good thing, but R assures us, multiple times, that he won't go in our house, and then proceeds to put down the heavy thing they're carrying halfway between the truck and the house, and leaves it there. Mind you, in order to get in our house, from any door, you have to go up a couple steps. So now, instead of at least helping get it onto the porch so we can push it the rest of the way into the house, R leaves it so my brother and I have to carry it up and into the house ourselves, and I won't lie--I'm not strong at all.
R goes back to the truck to get something else to carry, and my brother and I follow him. At one point R mumbles something that I'm still not entirely sure of, but I hear the word 'child'. Knowing he'd seen us with my Nephew, and people always assume he's my own child, I launch into an automatic explanation that he's not mine. I mean I love the kid, but I'm not married and have no plans to have any children anytime soon, and I get tired of people instantly thinking Nephew is mine (because in this town, I swear to you every woman has at least 1 kid, regardless of age or marital status). R interrupts me to explain that he called me a 'healthy young child', because he's either over 60 or almost 60, again I'm not entirely sure. It's at this point that I catch his breath, and it smells remarkably like beer.
Now I'm pretty damn sure he's drunk, and that would actually explain everything that he's said and done up to this point. Shortly after the misunderstanding about calling me a child, he spots his 'cousin' across the street and shouts a greeting at him, and then basically ditches us to go back to his own house with his 'cousin' and a few other guys. I say 'cousin' because I'm 90% sure that the house R and Pregnant Man live in is some sort of drug dealing house, given how many random people go in and out of it all day long, and I don't for a second believe that this other man is R's cousin.
R was, in the end, almost zero help at all. My brother and I still had to fight to haul in the rest of the obnoxious furniture ourselves. We still have almost no idea what R said at any time between the slight slurring and the ghetto-thug accent. We basically just ended up with way more insight into our neighbor than we ever wanted/needed, and a slightly funny, slightly alarming story to tell about the day we moved a bunch of furniture. I also have some idea now of why R no longer has the creepy old super loud van he used to drive. I'm not complaining about that at all, because he would take off in that damn van at least 20 times a day and you could hear him coming/going for a good two blocks just due to the muffler. I don't miss that thing at all. Between R and Pregnant Man and the rest of their motley little crew across the street, I think I might spend a lot of time this summer on our front porch, windows open, notebook in hand to write down ideas for more blog posts...
Sincerely,
Smart Girl.
