well, it's kind of ironic, or coicidence or something like that. i was thinking of this last night, long before i read netter's latest post. mostly because of a recent event that happened just a few doors down from us about two weeks ago.

i grew up in a smallish town, where we could leave our doors unlocked at night(tho my father never did), drive down the street with our cardoors unlocked(tho my father always reminded me to lock mine), and cruise the teenstrip without fear of disappearing into the night. it of course was a simpler time.

when we moved to charlotte, i laid in bed listening to the sirens scream at night. my husband, being a city boy for awhile, loved that sound and somehow it comforted him. it didnt' bother me, and really, it was much easier to fall asleep to than a pasture full of noisy cows(cows don't sleep at night, i tell you).

we still don't lock our doors every night, because of the dog(dogs). hell, we can't even get the postman or a delivery man to wait at the door for us to answer once they knock and hear sergei do his bark/howl thing. by the time i get there, the guy is already back to his vehicle, waving at me.

but i try not to be paranoid. when we first moved here, there was a rash of crime, from the murder of a security guard down the street at the 24 hour grocery store, to the finding of a dead body just a few miles from us. but shit happens...and if it's your time, it's your time and no amount of precautions will save you.

my flaky neighbor lady on the other hand, is scared of her own shadow. she's the spiritual being who can't be concerned with what goes on in the world because she has to focus on raising her kids. she smokes pot then gives her kids massages and believes that when doing so, she's reaching a higher plane and talking to god. hey, if that's what she wants to believe, that's her business, i really don't care or judge her for it, i like people who think out of the box, and god knows i can't resist a flake. it's not my place in life to judge. however, i do offer my opinion that the girl is just plain high and when we're high, we have a tendency to put more stock into things than it really needs.

she's newly divorced with a fat-girl self-esteem(even tho she's had the stomach surgery to lose weight now, but you never really lose that fat girl inside) so she's shown really poor judgement in the past, getting drunk(even when her kids are home and asleep upstairs) and then getting chummy with the single male neighbors who then follow her home, trying to get into her pants. she then will relay the story with the postscript of "I don't feel safe living here with them." one night she even went over to the bar(looking for us, only we weren't there) and let some black guy come home with her. she of course realized the next day how stupid that was.

one night she let her dexedrine whore of a friend(we all know the type, the classic pathological liar, married with kids, but who's screwing around behind her husband's back---and even though i knew what kind of girl she was, i was raised to always be polite so i was distantly nice to her) stay the night. the friend then let the neighbor boys into flaky lady's house to party and when flaky lady got up the next morning, money and xanax were missing. again, she says, "I don't feel safe living here." even though the whole thing could have been avoided if her "friend" had shown some judgement and most of all, respect.

fast forward to two weeks ago. flaky neighbor was on yet another vacation out of state. mark and i had played a short game of quarters and had fallen asleep about 2 am. when we got up the next morning, z asked if we'd heard the gunshots the night before. poor hadi, who's just a country girl from africa and has never experienced anything like that, and had been scared out of her wits. mark and i had heard nothing.

upon a brief investigation, we found out that one guy and his father who lived three doors down from us had been shot. now listen, everybody from B to I or J knows these boys do drugs and we're not talking a little pot or a small baggie of mushrooms from time to time. we're talking massive amounts of coke. i dont' think they sell it because i never see traffic coming and going at all hours, but they consume a lot of it. one sunny morning they confessed to me they'd been up for three days.

so naturally, we think maybe the shooting stemmed from someone trying to jack their drugs. the son explained that some guys followed him through the gate and to his house wanting his car. they shot him in the leg and when he turned to run into the house, in the back. meanwhile, the father hearing the noise, ran out of the house and the guys shot him in the hand. they then ran up to the house and sprayed buckshot inside the townhouse and then left, without taking the car.

hadi frantically tells ibrahim the story because she's so freaked out(he's on the road). mark comments that he wonders if it's drug related and ibrahim agrees that's a possibility. that's as far as the comment goes.

but ibrahim, who's friends with flaky neighbor, tells her that he and mark initially wondered if it was drug related. flaky neighbor freaks the fuck out and relays at least part of that message to dexedrine whore, again saying "I don't feel safe living here." she herself knows the boys do drugs and has gone down there on several occassions begging them to find her weed.

Last week i'm leaving my house on my way to pick mark up from work. dexedrine whore, who's sleeping with the son who was shot, ambushes me and says, "(name withheld--but it's flaky neighbor) said ibrahim told her that mark was spreading rumors that it was a drug deal gone bad."

what the fuck? english is ibrahim's fourth language and "spreading rumors" is simply not in his venacular. nor do i think flaky neighbor worded it this way.

i looked at her and said, "he didn't say that" cuz he didn't. and his general comment never went further than the three of us(me, ibrahim and him). she then says' she's telling me "as one mother to another"(which is a real laugh) that that wasn't what happened, which we already knew by then that it was a random thing and guys with the same car and matching the same description had an hour earlier attacked a delivery driver before attacking the neighbor boy.

even the boy's father when he asked me about the comment, admitted he too thought it had to do with drugs and said, "believe me, right after it happened i was going around interrogating everyone asking if it was about drugs"

to me, it would have been better if it was about the drugs because random crime is much more scarier. but now, we're suddenly the bad guys. the boy, who'd always been pretty friendly with me, now won't even look at me. ibrahim went off on flaky neighbor lady because her dexedrine whore of a friend not only made mark look bad, but also ibrahim.

i've digressed and gone round and round here. basically, i guess what i'm trying to say is random shit happens, no matter where you live and you can't live your life in fear. after living in the city for seven years, i'm used to it. adapt or die and you can't move away from it, you can't bury yourself in your house and hope it never happens to you. you can take certain precautions but in reality if it's god's will, it's god's will and there ain't nothing you can do about it.

and i guess the other point i want to make is when you try to be nice to some people, other people simply won't let you. some people hate themselves, hate their lives and want to make everyone that's fairly happy and well adjusted pay for it. and those that are naive and gullible, will let them. i'm pissed because i felt for flaky neighbor lady. she was one of those fat girls with a low self-esteem, who'd just been through a tramatic divorce. having been there myself, i tried to be there for her. but sometimes people don't want that i guess. sometimes people would rather hang onto those people that will eventually do them harm. listen, flaky lady ain't dumb. she's naive, but not dumb. she knows what kind of friend that girl is, but for some reason, maybe it's the need to always look for the good in someone even though they show there is very little or none, that keeps her from admitting it to herself.

and when shit like this happens to me, when i'm burned through no fault of my own and despite being nice, i always say, never again. but you can't do that either, and i know that i will again extend myself others because you just never know when you'll meet someone who is worth your time and effort.