this weekend was amazing - 70 degree days, low humidity, a little bit of sun, and neighbors out and about! we took advantage of the conditions and headed out in the yard for all of saturday. between cutting back savannah grass and washing the porch, a little neighbor boy stopped in front of our house to inform me that his "brother" called me humpty dumpty and a fat bitch. (of course, he took great joy in conveying this message and repeated it about 10 times.)
this "family" has a lot of challenges - about 7 unrelated adults and six children living together in a dilapidated house. first the adults - the "father" graces the pages of the district sex offender registry, the "mother" is a paranoid schizophrenic alcoholic, the three older "brothers" are all products of the dcps special education system and two of them think they're bad boys, and the older "sister," (who is currently dating TWO of the older brothers - one of whom may have fathered her most recently born baby) also a product of dcps special education and the mother of 4 children under the age of six. now the kids (all known to child and family services) - a thirteen year old girl who recently set her head on fire while trying to scorch the end of her braids and who may or may not be "talking to" one of the older "brothers," the 11 year old boy on the autism spectrum (and the conveyor of the message), a 8 year old girl who rarely bathes and just wants to be loved, and three baby boys (4, 3, and new born) who are NEVER supervised.
writing all of this just made me very depressed and now makes the end of the story not so important, and not at all funny. the short story is i went to talk to the wanna be gangsta and informed him that i am not-in-fact an egg and, while i'm definitely fat, he's not allowed to call me a bitch until he gets to know me.
the end
08 March 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Chica - how gracious of you. But sheeesh! Very sad. Reminds me of my old neighborhood in Raleigh. On the coldest day of the year, we had a lady in shorts, no shoes and a tank top ring our doorbell at 7 am asking me for a lighter. (not food, not warm clothes!) Sad. All our neighbors were on crack literally and we were the only white folk on the margins of a historic neighborhood. Don't even get me started on my stories helping 'rehab' one of the houses after it was condemned. I could not believe the living conditions. You're so much more at ease with co-existing there than I could be!! Then again, I do have the radicals with pit bulls. Not sure which is worse.
I seriously admire you.
the thing is though that they're not the norm in the neighborhood. the norm is retired, federal government employee or other retired long-time worker who is living comfortably in their home that has appreciated about 700% since they bought it. and i think that it makes it even more difficult for those on the "fringe" (both literally and figuratively). the nice thing is that the kids up the street get a stable neighborhood and a good neighborhood elementary school.
Oh Becca ~ how I love you.....
Post a Comment