When I first moved into our house (and I say it like that because I moved into the house that Wade already lived in), I was quickly introduced indirectly to our neighbors. There are only 3, so it was a quick intro. Neighbor behind us is a nice older couple with horses. Neighbor diagonally across the road was sort of a jacka$$ and put garbage on our property because he thought we couldn’t see it. He has since moved and the new people are super nice. And then there was Bob.
Bob is our directly across the street neighbor. He’s an odd one. Very nice and absolutely harmless, but just odd. He’s the very helpful type. For example, he let us borrow his wood splitter. For two years. He’ll help shovel our driveway back into place when the rain washes it way. Just a nice guy. But, again, odd.
Bob has something like 47 step children and he’s been married MANY times… and friends, it’s not as if Bob is a catch. His wife when I moved in was a very large lady. About 3 times larger than Bob and she would sunbathe a lot. That is her prerogative*, but it was unpleasant for me. Alex used to run over to their yard to play with their (weird) dog, Wolf and when I would go to retrieve her, I would see the bathing “beauty” on the back porch. Then I would want to stab my eyes out.
Anyway, Beauty had a lot of kids. How many exactly, I can’t be sure. I know of at least four, but there may have been more. One of the kids was in the 11-14 age range and I called him PJ. That is not his name.
PJ used to place basketball incessantly. Which is great – yay for kids playing outside rather than playing basketball via video game. Rock on. He only wore Michael Jordan attire, as well.
As I mentioned, Alex would wander over to visit. PJ… well, let’s just say he was not a fan of Alex. He was scared even. She was a big fluff ball and the farthest thing from scary, but whatever. Whenever she came to see him, he would drop his basketball and FREEZE. He’d hold his arms very close to his body and say “Go home Alex!” and pivot so she was always directly in front of her. And every time he did this I would giggle and think of this:
Taking after my dad and creating random names for people, PJ was born. Pivot Jordan.
Well, Bob and Beauty got a divorce. It was too cold in New England, so she packed up and moved to Florida leaving Bob behind.
A few weeks ago, a guy started showing up at Bob’s house ALL the time. He came over one day and introduced himself as …. well, honestly, I don’t know. I was distracted because I realized it was PJ! Here was my chance to learn his name and I blew the opportunity because PJ was all grown up!
I told him that I remembered him from a few years ago and pointed Alex out to him. I said, “You probably remember her.” (hehehe…) and he said, “No…I wasn’t a very observant child.”
Nice to see he got over his fear of my pooch. He just better watch out for Mabel!
*I did not know that is how you spell “prerogative.” I always thought it was PERogative. Huh. Learn something new every day.
Wearing Stilettos & Living on a Farm 
