Applying For a Permanent Waver

By the time you finish reading this little snippet of soft, puffy heavenliness, you are going to be utterly amazed by how clever and original the title of this edition of my brainwaves actually is. In fact, I could basically write about anything in the world right now and I would still be amazed by how clever that headline is. Because I’m that easily amused? No. It’s because I have a keen sense of what’s punny and what’s not. And that headline, my dear friends, is solidly punny.

We’ve lived in our current house now for 22 years. Many of you house-hoppers will be stunned by that, but it’s comfortable, has great neighbors, provides plenty of blog fodder and more importantly – we’re too lazy to pack up and move. As I said, we have been truly blessed to have great neighbors through all of those years. Wonderful, warm people who are always willing to share and talk and not be annoyed by my lack of yard care.

Except. For. Them.

There is a house on the corner of our street – about 5 houses down from us. They, too, have lived there for as long as we have lived in our house. We’ve seen our kids grow up at the same time, we’ve seen new cars being driven into the driveway and we’ve seen the same cars towed out as they’ve reached the end of their lives.

So what could possibly be the problem?

I’ve driven by their house for 22 years. That’s 8,030 days. I’m estimating that I go by their house 4 times a day for a total of 32,120 house-passes. That’s a lot of times I’ve gone past their house. I’m not even counting the countless times that we’ve walked by their house, the 13 times I’ve jogged past, or the twice I’ve ridden a bike past gasping with my last breath.

During that time, let’s take a wild guess at how many times they’ve been out in their yard when I’ve driven by – I’m going with a conservative 3 times a week. Over 22 years that makes it reasonably feasible that I’ve driven by them working in their yard 3,432 times. That’s a lot of yard work and a lot of opportunities for good, positive neighborly interaction.

So why is it that in those 3,432 drive-by passes, they have refused to wave at me ONCE???? I wave at them every single time as I pass by – and I KNOW that we have made eye contact regularly. But is there a kindly “Hey, good to see you neighbor!” wave back at me? Not a single time. Neither Elmer nor his wife Beulah (names changed because it’s funnier that way) nor any of their kids have ever waved back to me. Let’s examine possible reasons:

• They are actually in a slightly off-shifted dimension where they can’t actually see anything outside of their own yard. Sure – they LOOK normal, but the slight phasing of the byzantian crystals has caused a shift in the time-space continuum. I wonder if Donald Trump is actually leading the polls in THEIR universe????
• They don’t have arms. Admittedly, this is a stretch but it’s possible that they don’t actually have arms. I think I have seen him shoveling or cutting the grass however – so I’m putting the probability of this theory pretty low.
• They are actually zombies. It’s a definite possibility – but I don’t think zombies normally cut their grass or build extensions to their homes. However, I could be wrong, because I really don’t know how zombies spend their time when they’re not terrorizing small towns in South Dakota.

Other than those three, there really is no logical explanation for never ONCE lifting a casual hand and saying howdy. It’s now become such a game to coax them somehow to wave that I will slow down specifically as I go by their house and give them an extra second or two for them to be able to comprehend how they should, as normal human beings, respond to the obviously foreign concept of a waved hand.

And now, to conclude, go back up to the title of this blog and just cogitate on the incredible twistedry and wizardiness that drips off of each word. I’m doing that right now, and frankly, I’m salivating. But I’d STILL have time to return a wave.