Here it is Monday morning again. The weeks seem to fly by. I’m a writer by trade. I have to produce a weekly story for an online fiction writing site. The problem is that I’m also a procrastinator. And I often wait until the last minute to start writing. Sometimes I have difficulty coming up with an original idea right away. And as the years go by, my ideas seem to flow more slowly each week. 

And this week is no different. I sat at my desk for over three hours, and not a single idea came to mind. It’s eleven-thirty, and I have nothing. My mind is a complete blank. I start to panic. And at that moment, I happen to glance out my office window. And I see one of my neighbors coming out of his garage with his dog on a leash. It looks like he is about to take him for a walk. And then a delivery truck pulls up to his curb and parks. The driver emerges from the truck with a relatively large package in tow. The dog barks at him, and the closer the delivery guy comes, the louder the dog barks.

My neighbor, whose name is Jake tries to calm his dog down. He accidentally loses his grip on the dog leash, and the dog lunges at the UPS guy, and he drops the rather large package. I hear noises indicating that something fragile is in the package. And then Jake trips on the curb and falls flat on his face. Jake’s dog growls at the UPS guy, lunges at his leg, and bites down hard. As if he’s biting down on a raw steak or something. The UPS guy screams out expletives so loud that I can hear every word he says. The dog takes off down the street like a bat out of hell. The UPS guy is a close second. He looks mad as hell, and I fear for the dog’s life.

I can no longer see what is going on with UPS guy and the dog. I run to the front door, open it, and look from right to left. I don’t see either of them right away until I hear UPS guy still yelling profanities at the top of his lungs. Then I spy the dog running into our neighbor’s back yard across the street. I see Jake limping across the street and calling out Tuc a the top of his lungs. That’s the dog’s name, Tennessee Tuc. Now the dog, the UPS driver, and Jake are in the neighbors’ yard across the street.

This is the most excitement I’ve seen in our neighborhood in the five years. That’s how long we have lived here. And nothing, absolutely nothing happens here. It is a small development with twenty houses. One street runs through the development, and three streets end in cull-d-sacs. We rarely see anyone. Everyone has a garage, and they go in and out through their garages. If you’re lucky, you will catch one of the neighbors riding their lawnmowers and cutting their grass during the Spring and Summer. Otherwise, our neighborhood seems deserted. I’m not exaggerating. The neighbors do not talk to one another. Occasionally they will wave, but that is a rare occasion.

The next thing I see is a horse running across the street into our front yard. I guess you might be wondering where a horse came from. Well, believe it or not, there’s a horse farm behind our development. One day one of the horses opened the gate and took a walk across the street. And apparently, and decided to use our yard as a toilet. When I went outside, I found a large pile of horse shit. I walk across the street to the owner’s house and tell him, “one of your horses is in our yard. He doesn’t have a harness on him, so I couldn’t bring him home. He came over and took the horse home. Apparently, the horse’s name was Tina. Can you believe it?

Now, I’m having difficulty hearing or seeing what is going on. Since Jake and the dog and UPS guy are at the horse farm, the horses are becoming upset by the commotion. Tuc is barking, and Jake’s yelling for Tuc, and the UPS guy is screaming like a banshee because he is still mad as hell. Barring any common sense, I cross the street to investigate what is going on at the horse farm. Yeah, I don’t know their name either because I only saw the husband going in and out of his barn. And I never saw his wife at all. Can you believe it?

So, now I’m standing at a distance from the action, but not so far away that I can’t see and hear everything coming down. I feel like I’m watching a movie or something. I have no shame. And there is no end to how nosy I am capable of being. Well, we all have our faults. And this is mine.

Tuc is lunging at the UPS guy who has had about enough of the crap that he’s going to take. He starts picking up random rocks from the farmer’s backyard and propelling them at Tuc. At least I thought they were rocks until I got close enough to smell them. And I realize he’s pitching horse dung at Tuck and Jake. For some reason, I find this to be hysterical, and I start laughing so hard that I almost swallow my tongue.

That is when they all turned in my direction and became aware that I was watching them. Apparently, they don’t think this is an occasion for laughter. Because the next thing I know both Jake and UPS guy are picking up and propelling horse shit at me. I yell out, “Hey, what the hell did I do?”

And I get slammed two more times. And then we all look at each other and start laughing. Jake calls his dog over to him and grabs his collar. And then he turns towards the UPS guy and says, “I’m sorry about my dog biting you. Are you alright? Would you like to come back to my house and we can take a look at your bite? Maybe you would like to sit down and have a cup of coffee or something? You know my wife, Sharon, just made some awesome cornbread yesterday. Maybe you like to have some?”

And that is when I got a good look at Jake’s noggin and saw that he had acquired a huge red lump on his forehead from the header he took on his sidewalk. I had to clap my hand over my mouth because I had the strange and misguided idea that this was somehow really funny. I’m sure Jake wouldn’t agree.

I say, “Hey, I’m sorry for laughing. How about you all come over to my house and we can relax for a bit and calm down? And that is how I made my first couple of friends in the neighborhood. And I decided from now on I’m going to start making a more concerted effort to get to know my neighbors. And hopefully, I wouldn’t have to wait for another brawl to take place before I meet them.

It turns out we all had some things in common. Who would have thought? Not me. So, please take my advice, and don’t wait until people start throwing horse dung at you before introducing yourself to them. Life is too short.

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