Friday, April 2, 2010
Maybe It's Me
When I first moved into my home of twenty something years with my wife of twenty something years, I struck up a conversation with the guy that lived right behind us. It was a pleasant conversation about the neighbors and the neighborhood and couple of weeks later, my wife informed me that the man had had a heart attack and died. Not long after that, the guy that lived next door to us, after a brief conversation with me in his driveway one day, promptly passed away a few days later. At that point I took a look around at my neighbors and discovered that there was a shortage of males. The neighbors immediately surrounding my home were all widows.
Diagonally across the street there was Jon, my closest male neighbor. I told my wife that I wasn’t going to talk to him for his own protection. I was feeling by this time, like the Angel Of Death. The thing about Jon was that he wouldn’t leave me alone. Whenever he saw me outside, he’d come over and want to talk. I couldn’t be impolite, so we would have meaningless conversation as I slowly back away toward the safety of my front door. As time went on, Jon would give me stuff. I’m not sure where this stuff came from, but it was good stuff, new stuff, and it was stuff I could use too. I remember him giving me work gloves, a tape measure, and one year, he gave me a winter work jacket. I figured there was a hidden agenda, like maybe he wanted me to help him around his house or something. Eventually I told him I didn’t want him to give me any more stuff, and he didn’t and he never asked for anything in return.
My closest male neighbor, Jon, died yesterday. I think he was around 58 years old. We got to know each other a little better over the years. I’m going to try and pay him back now by doing some work on his house, not because I owed him anything, but because he was a nice guy and good neighbor.
POSTED BY STAN on April 2, 2010
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