It’s a beautiful day in the neighbourhood, it’s a beautiful day as a neighbour,

Would you be, could you be, won’t you be mine?

Would you, be could you be, won’t you be mine?

Won’t you be my neighbour?

Today, children, we are going on a tour of our neighbourhood here in the desert.  Let me introduce you to some of the regular characters that we see every day as we venture out:

The Gate Shitter: he is a young boy, about 10 years old.  As I drove up our street one day, I saw this boy hiking his pants back up and refastening his belt.  I had no idea what he was doing, but soon made the grisly discovery as I was pushing open the gate: a fresh, steaming pile of poop right at our gate.  Lovely.  My husband marched outside and argued with this boy for a few minutes, who, of course, denied leaving his Oh Henry bar all soft and rolled up on the ground.  *cough*  *gag*  We haven’t seen any poop nugget presents since, so I think the boy was sufficiently shamed. 

Rent-a-Grandpa: this man is blind in one eye and seems to be rented out by various people, the Gate Shitter included, to accompany them on begging excursions in the wealthier neighbourhoods.  I don’t know how they don’t think we would notice that it’s the same old man, but he often comes to our gate with some person or other.  We have made the policy not to hand out money from our gate, instead, handing out fresh produce, lunch items and water.  They really kicked their visits into gear after I handed out homemade bbq chicken pizza one time.  Sorry, rent-a-gramps, pizza isn’t always on the menu.

Sweeper Dude: The only exception to our “no money from our gate” policy  is the man that sweeps our street.  Since he is working for a very minimal wage and often cleans up our garbage that gets torn apart by the wild dogs and goats in the area, we feel like it’s more a tipping service than a hand out.  Now that my husband knows Sweeper Dude’s name, he rings the buzzer pretty much every day, asking for water and then we give him some money. 

Security Man: For the majority of our time here, I thought this guy was just some lazy dude that liked to sit on the corner of our street in the shade of a tree.  Turns out that he’s security: watching our comings, our goings, our guests, and most likely interviews any local people that have visited our home.  He has two functions: 1) to make sure that we are safe, and 2) to make sure that there isn’t any illegal religious funny business going on. 

The Goat Hacker: A goat herder by occupation, a sound effects master by trade, the goat hacker leads his goats by throwing rocks at them and making a sound that sounds like a sick goat coughing, “Akgh! Akgh! Akgh!”  Took me months to realize that this sound I was hearing was not an animal living an unfortunate existence but actually a man. 

Light Reflector Touching Guy: Many a morning, as we are racing down the hill to make it to school on time, we nearly run over the light reflector touching guy.  He is obviously mentally ill, and spends an inordinate amount of time touching each and every single light reflector on the road that leads up towards the mountain.  He is an old man, frail, but he can sure move quick, never missing a reflector on his way to get out of the path of a vehicle bearing down on him.

Crazy I-Wear-Pants-But-They-Aren’t-Really-There Dude: We see this man in front of our grocery store pretty every time that we go there, and we nearly hit him with our car that many times because he wanders randomly through the street and traffic.  I’m not sure he sees reality the way that the rest of us do. His pants technically fasten around his waist, but there really isn’t much of a point since they are shredded down the length, leaving not much to the imagination.  He is the only person that I’ve seen eat and drink publicly during the fasting month of Ramadan.  He also takes part in the local drug, mashing it so that it’s a grody paste that he scoops with his finger into his mouth.  *gag*  *cough* 

It’s a beautiful day in the neighbourhood… won’t you be my neighbour?

Change sweater, change shoes

*end scene*