The Boys Next Door

Brett and I have an ongoing tussle with four boys who live next door. They are in high-school and college, don't seem to have a dad, and their mom is "a cool mom" so she just lets them be obnoxious and presumably stays on the other side of the house so she can play the fool. Our bedroom is right outside of their driveway which has a hot tub and a basketball hoop, so the boys invite friends over to play ball and bob in the bubbles which sounds fairly wholesome, but they seem to only do it between the hours of 12 and 4am.
Now between you and me, I don't really mind it. Sure their childish shrieks of wonder and enjoyment will wake me up on occasion, but it kind of makes me laugh. You can hear them calling each other names and giggling while they play. What fun fun can be! But then there's Brett. He values his sleep as much as the virtuous traits of others and is incensed by the indulgent ignorance of these particular boys. 

During a midnight basketball game, Brett stepped out onto the landing and yelled, "Hey guys!" The chatter stopped, the ball quit bouncing, the music dimmed. And in the silence Brett said, "Knock it off. I'm trying to sleep." This halted the fun for the night. I guess all the boys scuttled inside to hide from the grumpy old neighbor. 

The party schedule lines up with Spring Break, Summer, and Winter Break, so there is not year-round obnoxiousness. Most parties are met with no interference from the skinny couple next door. (That's us.) We don't usually say anything at all, though I got real huffy on the third occasion of finding broken glass near our fire pit. They throw beer cans and wine bottles into our yard which I now simply pick up and heave back over the fence. Come to think of it, that hasn't happened in a while. Maybe Cool Mom finally noticed all the trash in her yard. There are so many boys at this house at any given time that we don't know which ones live there. They all look the same; 5'10" with long, skinny torsos and puffy brown hair. So there is no finding the leader and negotiating a peace deal.

During a 3am Hot Tub party with music so loud it was like being at the concert, Brett again stepped out onto the landing in his underwear and yelled at the kids. They said, "Yes Sir. Sorry Sir" the way polite kids might, but not 15 minutes later they, and the music were screaming again. This time Brett walked into the yard and climbed up the fence so that his head appeared next to their hot tub and he had a brief conversation that curbed the fun to a 3 out of 10. Compromise. 

I'm usually laying in bed cringing. Not only is Brett always participating in these confrontations in his underwear, but he's not very gracious about it. It irks me every time because it is not the Brett I know. Also, in my mind I'm a cute twenty year-old college girl that lives next door and they're going to think my boyfriend is totally lame. I don't know why I think this, except for the idea that you don't ever feel much older than twenty so sometimes you forget that actual twenty year olds think you're fifty. I have no desire to even talk to these baby-boys, so I genuinely don't understand my desire to be perceived as cool from a distance. 

But then things changed. 

Early one morning, post party, I saw one of the boys' friends walk to his car and take out a tied-off bag of trash and an empty beer box, and throw them into the bushes on the property line of our precious 96 year old neighbor's house. Oh hellll nah! I thought to myself.

"Brett!" I shrieked from my office chair while I stared out the window at the perpetrator, "Wanna go yell at a boy that just threw his trash in Mrs. Cassandra's yard?" Before he even answered me I heard chaos erupt in the kitchen. Brett had been making a breakfast concoction on the stove, and suddenly I heard a thunk and a clink and Brett taking hasty steps. 

"Yeah!" he yelled as he turned on the faucet. "What happened?"

"He threw a garbage bag and a beer box over where you're always picking up litter." I heard silverware bang into a glass. 

"Ahh!" he growled, "Is he still there?" Brett screeched to a halt behind me, scanning the scene through the window.

"Yeah! He's sitting in his car. Go get him, Bubba!" Brett rushed out the door.

I was enlivened by the confrontation. Justice would be served. I watched Brett march across the street and I opened my window to listen. It occurred to me that Brett really trusts me because he didn't see anything happen and the trash was not visible in the bushes. What if I had made it all up and sent Brett out to pick a fight with a young boy for no reason. I doubled checked that I saw what I saw. Satisfied with my conviction, I settled back in my chair to watch. Brett knocked on the driver's side window. It occurred to me that the boy could be combative. What if they get into a physical brawl?

The car door popped open.

Then I heard a pot boil over on the stove. "Rahh!" I grumbled as I scurried off to the kitchen. I took the lid off, turned the flame down and set the sticky lid in the sink. I ran back to my office window only to find Brett headed this way and the boy rooting around in the bushes. 

"What happened!" I shrieked with unexpected feelings of elation. 

It was short and sweet. After failing to get a confession, Brett growled at him to "pick up your s***" which promptly hustled the kid into the bushes.

Brett went back to his breakfast concoction and a few minutes later I heard him giggle.

"Whats funny?"

"I think I overreacted."

But this is when the shift happened. As Brett described the terror on the boy's face, I realized that we are actual adults, power-wielding elders of the young-person community. Brett barely said a dozen words and had that guy rectifying his ways in seconds. I realized we are wrought with power. Young people think we're old and know stuff. They think we're in charge of them! This is a genuine revelation I'm having here.

I suppose people who have kids know this already. They get to boss little people around and intimidate their tiny friends on a weekly basis. Parents instantly become authority figures, not just of their own kids but of all who are younger than they are. There is no second guessing whether or not to straighten out a bad seed. It's part of the job description. 

Kids think I'm an adult, as in, I can pretty much make them do anything I want! It's got me wanting to be the one on our landing at 3am demanding a truce, although I don't know if I have the courage to do it yet. Parents gets to start off easy with babies and build their authority up to teenagers and young people. Entry to executive level dominion. I reckon I should start small - start hanging around jungle gyms at the park... like a pervert. A power pervert.

It's all got me a little excited for the boys' next party. 

Big Mama

You ever been lucky enough to have a friend who experiences life the same way you do? And I don't mean sometimes - I mean just about every time. I know it is not uncommon for people to be very much like one or both of their parents, so it's not surprising to hear that Jimmy hates bell peppers just like his dad does. We are all, of course, made from the same scraps of particle board that our ancestors have always used. But in the case of Nancy Union, I didn't expect that I would just be a clone of her internal experience. 

We do not look the same and we have different interests, talents, and opinions, but what we take in from any experience will be exactly the same. We can go to a party but interact with different people, eat a different meal, stay for different amounts of time and on and on, but we will come back together the next day and exactly mirror each other's experience. We will have observed the same tiny detail; a silly shaped stain on a tablecloth or a cute mannerism from a waitress. We will both suggest that the music was 1.8 notches too loud. We both noticed the same great pair of shoes someone was wearing. We will have both felt disappointment at the dessert selection and have chosen to redecorate the space in our minds using a similar color palette. We will have gotten a whiff of something that we each describe as "dirty mop water." Most recently, and this is our favorite, we will have both developed the same bizarre physical ailment at the same point in the evening. And then when we tell each other about our night we will laugh and laugh at our strange selves.

I have no original thoughts. I am just a piece of my mother that broke off and grew legs. 

This eerie likeness to each other is somewhere in the "top 5 best things in my life that I had no control over." I do happen to like my mom, so being compared to her is not off-putting or distressing, as it seems to be for so many of my friends, especially when we were teenagers. But thats not why its in the top 5. It ranks so highly because it's awfully fun. What a riot to hear your experience played back to you through another lens. "Me too!" we constantly shriek as if it is not to be expected. 
And because of this shared experience magic trick we can do, we can easily place ourselves into each others stories and then feel as though it happened to us even though we weren't there. I remember one time listening to Mom tell me about something annoying that happened, and then I got all flustered and started coming up with reasons why I did it that way, when I suddenly remembered it was Mom's thing. "Oh wait, this is your story." And then we laugh and laugh. It's really easy for us to be on each other's team. We are often our only allies.

So when Mom got an unfair parking ticket at Folly the other day and decided to march on into Town Hall with it, I was her hype-man. "Yeah! Go in there and tell 'em!" The parking people had already left for the day, so Mom and I ranted and raved about the frustrating changes to our beloved beach as we rode back to James Island. Mom went on about "rich Yankees" while I came up with the new slogan; Can't live here. Can't rent here. Can't park here. We were volleying our fury back and forth when I said, "It's the Janet of the beaches!" I had a metaphor going in my head that I didn't realize I hadn't said out loud. But with conviction, mom said, "Yeah!" and then she slightly cocked her head and thought for a minute. 
"Cause Janet's supposed to be the fun sister!" I continued. 

"Mmm hmm!" Mom agreed.

"No wait, that's not her name. What's her name?" I asked. Then I realized her name is Cindy and that Mom couldn't possibly know what I was talking about. I burst out laughing at Mom's enthusiastic support of my thoughts despite her confusion. 

You don't know what I'm talking about do you?"

Then Mom giggled. "I really don't, no."

"Why did you agree with me?"

"I didn't know what you were talking about, but I know we feel the same, so I assumed I agree with you." 

We cackled all the way home.

Big Mama's got my back - even when I'm wrong.

Additionally, and unrelated, Mom has this life affliction where small inconveniences are drawn to her with a magnetic pull. They are not unique inconveniences; getting stuck behind a tractor when you're running late, being forgotten in a doctor's office waiting room, choosing the stall with no toilet paper, etc, but you can almost count on them to all find Mom on the same day. It is typical for Mom to have a few intentions for a day, only one of them urgent or important, and that will be the one task that is thwarted by the universe. This is so well documented that it is barely news to anyone anymore. Dad often accuses her of "complaining," but Mom and I know it is something insidiously focused on her. And because she is so polite, she usually accommodates the inconvenience, accepting it with patient grace - at least until she calls and tells me about it. On rare occasions she attempts to stand up for herself, and typically that backfires. There is no justice for Nanny U, and she and I find it outrageous. What is it about her?

Just last week we popped into a cafe for coffee before running a couple errands together. We enjoyed our mugs and shared a pastry and then said, 'Ok, lets get going, we're on a tight schedule." We ambled down the sidewalk and rounded the corner only to find Mom's car surrounded - completely blocked in by an assortment of obstacles. Four school buses were parked in the road, trapping the car in place. A huge walking tour blocked the sidewalk on the passenger side. Roughly 100 kindergarteners filled the street, pouring out of a nearby playhouse and filing into the buses. No other cars seemed to be blocked in. Only Mom's. 

"Bluh!" Mom grumbled. 

Just another day. 

I was thinking on all this - her and my internal equivalency and the hilariously exasperating ways she is hassled by existence and I laughed out loud for a few minutes all alone in my office. I just like her so much.

It's a sincere joy, however selfish, to be a clone of your soulmate.