Who are the People in your Neighborhood?

Frank and I went on a walk yesterday and along the way we spotted several of our neighbors: “How’s the gardening going, Edwin?” “Hey, Tammy! Long time no see.” “No, thanks, Greg, we don’t want a beer.” We like our new neighbors but they’re all so normal. There’s nothing really to discuss about them when we get back into our house.

That was different in our neighborhood in Austin. Our house was on a hill and we had big a picture window in the living room where I could sit and spy on all the neighbors.

First, there was our duplex mate, Debra. She was a single, 47-year-old hippie-like woman with a bumper sticker that said “I heart 78704. South Austin, Texas, The World.” She loved three things: her cats, live music and talking non-stop. In fact, sometimes I would be leaving to go to the YMCA really early in the morning and she would still be outside from the night before—sitting on her back-porch swing, sipping wine and chatting with a friend. She would stumble over and try to start talking to me and I would have to quickly make my escape. We never knew when Debra was going to stop by—in the evening, during the day, middle of the night (“I’m sick. Do you have some Pepsi?”) but when she did we were in for a very extended conversation.

Speaking of extended conversations, our neighbor on the other side loved to chat it up too. She lived with her husband and son and we called this family of three “The Corndogs.” Why? Well the dad had a bumper sticker on his car that just said “Corndog.” We suspect it was a band but we never actually asked. We just gave them that nickname and it stuck. We’d say, “Oh, the corndogs are going on a trip. We need to feed their fish” or “I saw dad corndog out there playing basketball with little corndog.” But mom corndog was the talkative one. If we arrived at our house and ran into her OR Debra, we might as well have a seat put on a pot of coffee. Sometimes they would both come over at the same time. It would be a long night.

On the other side of Debra were the gay stoners. Poor guys. Yes, they were gay but I’m pretty sure they weren’t stoners. We gave them that name because the guys who lived there before were definitely stoners. So we originally called the house “the stoners.” Then these three gay guys moved in (two were a couple, one was a third wheel) and if I just called them “the gay guys” Frank would get confused. So I’d say, “The gay guys who moved into the stoners’ house.” So we just shortened it to the gay stoners.

Across the street from them were the orange people. Their skin wasn’t orange; their house was. They had three kids and Frank and I just dubbed them, “The orange kids.” We’d say, “The oldest orange kid is out there playing. Oh, there’s the orange dad. Hope the gay stoners don’t see.” The gay stoners had a mad crush on the orange dad.

So there you have it. Those were our peeps on Academy dr. Now that we’re in the burbs, we don’t have clever names for our neighbors. They don’t do anything interesting like put corndog bumper stickers on their cars, paint their houses orange or…engage in homosexual activity. Yep, I miss our quirky street. But thinking about them just makes me crave a corndog.