So I was thinking

Astonishing, I know.

I've been having a lot of sleepless nights as of late, though, so I've had to rely on my prattling inner dialogue for company. It started (the thoughts, that is) when I idly recalled a conversation with someone that made me remember how an unnamed a super-suburban friend of mine voiced concern about visiting me because she thinks I live in an unsafe neighborhood.

My immediate reaction of course is to roll my eyes. Okay, so I hear police sirens 3 or 4 times a day and on average see a cop car parked across the street at my naughty neighbors about twice a week. And while sure, it's a lower-income type person area, it's still not that bad of a neighborhood. Not the best, but not a bad one.

But then I started thinking about why I resented her comment, and I realized it had nothing to do with my neighborhood, it had to do with how I felt about where she lives, and how uncomfortable people who choose that lifestyle generally make me. Their big, newborn cookie cutter houses, with not a shard of chipping paint in sight. The spacious lawns manicured to perfection, dripping with weed killer and perfectly uniform- not a blade of grass out of place. Their artificial, 'decorative' koi ponds and fountains. The evenly spaced flowers, measured out down to a quarter of an inch accuracy, tamed and clipped beyond credibility. Not a shriveled leaf allowed to remain in sight. The cheesy family name signs on their mailboxes giving the illusion of hominess when really they hardly spent 9 hours a day there, eight of which are sleeping. The virtually non-existent children, neither seen nor heard- TV and video games, no doubt.

And then I wonder why it makes me so uncomfortable. So I think of my neighborhood. The sounds of cars and bustle at most times of the day, children playing and yelling and screaming at each other, the man across the street who plays his radio talk shows loud outside on his porch in the early evenings after dusk. The cat in his pimp-mobile that usually honks his horn, his music blaring so loud it makes the windows of my house rattle, between 12pm-3am for his girlfriend to come out. The 50 yr old man next door who I secretly watched spend 25 minutes at 11pm in his front yard with his hose trying to see how far he could get it to spray out into the street, and chuckling to himself while he watched the reaction of cars slowing down and trying to go around the stream of water, just to mumble something about "watering the tree"(a HUGE maple manifestly not in need of watering)and walk away when he saw another neighbor pull up and look at him questioningly. The banging of screen doors on porches, the growling of junker cars, the barking of dogs. The baby next door that cries a lot. Some would find it obnoxious, I'd imagine. But personally I find it comforting.

And now maybe this is a stretch, but for my crazy mind I feel like the choice I'm making is somewhere along the lines of choosing the likelihood of people hurting each other over the likelihood of people hurting themselves. So maybe my neighborhood has more crime, but I'll betcha anything her neighborhood had a larger percentage of suicides and people with massive depression. I think their problem is far more disturbing. If you don't value your own life, the next step is to not value those of others anyway. And even on a less fundamental way, just socially.. so maybe the people around me are more eccentric, ridiculous or insensitive... even stupid, but at least their personalities aren't dulled and their manners aren't inhibited by empty politness.

Anyways. I only slept an hour and a half last night (I had company), and I had to get up early and have spent the day thus far helping out at my 4yo neice's birthday party with little munchkins yelling screaming tripping running waddling stumbling falling splashing throwing hitting pooping grabbing everywhere. Gotta love 'em, but I'm tired.

I'm gonna go turn off my head for a while. Later.