Expect the worst, so you won’t be disappointed
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- May 10, 2020
- 880
My wife has more than a little Gladys Kravitz in her.
Since her retirement almost two years ago, she’s become her own one-person Neighborhood Watch committee, keeping an eye on what’s going on with something close to religious zeal.
I feign occasional interest in her observations, especially when they involve turtles, lizards, snakes, birds and other wildlife because I know that if any of those species finds its way into our home, I know I’m going to be expected to do something.
And I’m not fond of having to do much of anything these days.
The last thing you want to read about is another person’s litany of I’m-going-crazy-staying-at-home complaints during the coronavirus lockdown, so I’ll refrain from playing that old song.
Besides, I rather like not having to go anywhere.
It feeds my inner Bartleby.
Like Herman Melville’s title character in his 1853 short story, I would prefer not to get involved in any drama that occurs outside my own little world.
I suppose it’s a function of aging coupled with an engrained sense of comfortable, languid ennui that’s led to this point in my life, one that finds me stranded, isolated by choice and necessity.
My wife keeps me up to date, though, and I can’t deny I rely on her observations to serve as an early-warning system.
So I know about the new white dog that’s being walked around the block, when the cable guy is making a house call, if the mail’s in and whether or not the Fed Ex driver is wearing a mask.
But every now and then, her Gladys Kravitz tendencies trigger a Def Con One response, and that’s what happened the other day.
It came as a jolt and set off an unavoidable sense of déjà vu.
“There’s a moving van in the driveway next door,” she reported, poking her pretty head into the Stereo Room, where I was listening to “Plundered My Soul,” a magnificent Rolling Stones song that was inexplicably left off of “Exile on Main Street.”
“In or out?” I asked, suddenly pulled from my 1972 reverie.
“I’ll let you know,” she said and went back to her study, where two large windows afford her maximum visual contact with her version of Morning Glory Circle, home of Darrin and Samantha Stephens.
She came back and said one word to me, and that was “Out.”
And there it was, in all its stark reality, one of my worst fears.
New neighbors.
Just thinking those two words gave me the heebie jeebies.
Immediately I was flooded with memories so foul, so feral, so utterly and fixedly rank that I had to take a deep breath and gather my wits.
“There’s nothing you can do about it,” my saner side said, “no sense worrying about it until there’s something to worry about.”
But all my irrational side had to do was say, “Remember when … ”
And that sent me down a rabbit hole of vivid history and misery.
I thought of my very first apartment when, as a newly minted member of the rental community, I found myself in almost daily conflict with the couple downstairs who had — among other inconsiderate things — erected a 30-foot antenna outside my balcony, one they used to monitor CB traffic on their base unit.
And the reason I knew all about the long-haul truckers was the signal they received bled into my JBLs so that when I was listening to Van Morrison or Bonnie Raitt, I’d be subjected to endless “breaker, breaker” chatter coming through my speakers.
Ultimately I drove a nail through the wire that snaked past my hibachi, thus rendering the system mute.
A few months later I was asked to vacate the premises, ostensibly because the landlord’s son wanted my unit, but I’ve always had a suspicion that my Hogan’s Heroes-style sabotage was to blame.
Since then my bad luck with neighbors has become something of a black cloud that — quite unfortunately — followed me into my relationship with the woman who would one day marry me.
There was the guy who parked me in all the time, the lady who left her garbage rotting on the landing, the punk who keyed my new Mustang and the teenager who banged on his drums so loudly — and so badly — that it called for police intervention.
Not that any of that miscreant misbehavior was ever punished; on the contrary the sinners prevailed as the sufferers sought new digs.
I’ve always liked Robert Frost’s line in “Mending Wall,” the one that says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Leave it to a poet to stick in a stiletto without shedding blood.
It’s not that I’m anti-social.
I can schmooze with the best of them.
Most people I meet are friendly, but they’ll never be my friends, if you catch my drift, and I have no problems with that reality. All I want from neighbors is not to have to deal with any unpleasantness.
I’m anti-confrontational. I have been in only one fist fight my entire life, and that was when an eighth-grade slight turned ugly.
I’m also a nice guy. I don’t want to have to point out someone’s obvious character flaws or call out his or her flagrant failings.
But when I know new neighbors are coming, I always think of something legendary Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes said about the forward pass.
Three things can happen, and two of them are bad.
So as my wife maintains her “Rear Window” vigilance, blending it with her Gladys Kravitz “Bewitched” persona, I am left to fend off visions of the worst, even as I await a Creedence bad moon rising.
Of course with the American economy in free fall and the housing market cratering, it’s entirely possible — even likely — the house next door will stand empty for months or years to come.
And that would be fine by me.
It’s just that I have this sneaking suspicion my wife is going to tap on the door to the Stereo Room, open it slowly, shake her head and say something like, “Looks like nine kids and two pit bulls. Maybe it’s time we give some serious thought to Jamaica.”