This Isn’t Sesame Street
It seems as though my neighborhood is full of interesting characters, but I can’t tell if I live on a goofy street, or if I live in a wacky part of the world, or if it is an all-humans thing.
Depending on what time you drive through my neighborhood, there’s a good chance that you’ll hear my teenage neighbor banging on his drums in his garage. He hits them randomly like he’s just now sitting down at a drum-set for the first time, bangs around really fast for four seconds, taps a few times, and then rests. Then it starts all over. The funny part isn’t that he’s an awful drummer – instead, I’m amazed that he’s been drumming out there for years like this and hasn’t gotten any better. He might even somehow be getting worse. I fear a head injury has taken place over there.
My other neighbors across the street go all-out to decorate their house for Halloween, with orange lights, tombstones, and the like. Those decorations make it out about October 1st and then they’re more extravagant than any other neighbors’ Christmas decorations in December. The parents, kids, and pets end up dressing together as a group theme. The funny part is, when you ask either the husband or the wife about all the excitement about this particular holiday, they each say it’s the other one who is dialing Halloween up to an 11, and they each roll their eyes and act as though they’re not the interested party.
Exploring my neighborhood, there’s also a good chance that at least once a month, you’ll catch a grown man hurrying trash cans out to the curb in his underwear late at night. I cannot confirm nor deny if that person is me.
Another unforgettable neighborhood character who you might see trolling up and down my street is Franks, the gentleman who picks up scrap metal to turn them in at a recycling facility. The unforgettable part isn’t his old beaten truck or his Depression-era hardship stories – he does a crazy thing with his tongue where it flicks around like a snake, whether not he’s talking.
Franks will occasionally stop you on the street and ask about your excess metal situation while he mesmerizes you with the amazing flicking tongue. It seems to operate completely independently from the rest of him, dancing around in a half-open mouth. Even if you don’t have any scrap metal, like an unwanted BBQ grill or rusty lawn chairs to send with him, you’re hypnotized by the tongue and you find yourself starting to consider letting him recycle your whole pickup truck.
It’s probably rude, yet impossible not to stare right at the tongue. You quickly accept that there is a different life form that is merely visiting Franks’ mouth, and you wonder about its intentions and language capabilities.
One bummer about his scrap metal haul-off service is that Franks doesn’t mention until you’ve lugged all your large metallic junk to the curb that he also needs you to put it inside his truck for him. Oh – and by the way, his truck is always full, so you might have to do some removal and sorting of your other neighbors’ items to cram your stuff in there. What seemed like a 2-minute exercise is now a 20-minute ordeal, with you climbing around in the bed of Franks’ truck while he stands there and licks the air at you.
On a rare evening that I remembered to get the trash out to the curb before I stripped down to my underpants, I ran into a group of competitor scrap-metal guys, trolling up and down the street for unwanted junk to recycle. But these folks provided a full-fledged service, offering to do all the heavy lifting and disassembly. With impressive flair, a whole family piled out of the truck, disassembled and carried out all my unwanted scrap in record time with a smile, and left me with a handshake and a “Gracias!” I was half-tempted to talk them into taking the drum-set from the goofy teenage musician.
I initially felt good about offering my recycling to the super-efficient family, but later on I felt like I had let Franks down. The way my mind takes things too far, I imagined that the lack of earnings from my recycled junk would be the last straw that sent Franks into absolute poverty, ultimately leaving him laying cold and lifeless in a ditch somewhere.
… with his tongue still dancing around, of course.