Tonight I was walking by a house that was recently purchased and moved into by a new couple. The man and woman were outside speaking to another neighbor of mine. It was dark, but they called me over to get introduced all around. Turns out the lady is telephone trash like me! She retired at the age of 48 with 21 years service working in both Mountain Bell and Southwestern Bell. We can speak the same lingo like divestiture, craft, management, 3+ 3 and surplus. She saw it all through her career too. She seems very likable, as are most phone company retirees. We compared battle scars, but of course I won hands down on how my future was screwed by the people who raped and pillaged the once proud and ever so profitable directory side of the business.
I will certainly be stopping by to see her in the future. She seems like a fun lady.
The other neighbor, a long time resident of the area, is looking for a dog for her disabled husband to hold and pet. She was checking into a poodle advertised for $170. I told her to check out the shelters because they will often give away rescue dogs to seniors at no cost. The lady said she had looked into that but all they had for her was a 3 legged dog... I interrupted, "let me guess- named Lucky?" She stopped and looked thoughtful then smiled. I went on, "Maybe the dog comes with his own scooter, so you can take it for walks and he won't have to lift his leg!" Both ladies laughed.
I might not have said this sort of thing a month ago because you never know how people are going to take it. Some of these people here are waaaaaayyyy too serious about their dogs. My joking could have been taken as cruelty. I am now willing to risk being taken wrong for the sake of showing who I am and how I think. I am riding with no training wheels into this, my style of living.
Training wheels were dirty words in my house growing up. No Baron kid was ever going to have a bike with training wheels! You had to either sink or swim learning to ride two wheelers. We all had the bruises and scrapes to show for it during our bicycle boot camp experiences.
We were pretty damn fortunate kids at that. My grandma and grandpa were the only grandparents we had and we were their only grandchildren. We four got nice things from them that other grandkids did not. Each of us got brand new shiny Schwinn bikes. We didn't get no stinkin' Huffy bikes from Lewis or Ace Hardware, ours were purchased off the showroom floor of Fred the Fixer's. We all got the latest models complete with plastic streamers inserted in the holes of the handlebar grips. It was way cool the way they smelled and looked. That is, until you had to learn to ride it. Then the little dings and scratches made their way forever onto the pretty paint of the frames.
Learning to go solo is like this in a lot of ways. Like our street on Braemar Drive, living now is learning to ride and balance on a hill. Exhilerating, but there is always the odd crack in the sidewalk or the car that doesn't think kids should be on bikes in the street that won't give you a break. Sometimes the bike spins out in the curb and you put a nasty scrape on the pretty whitewall of your tire. And once you sail down the hill and reach the bottom, you've got to turn the bike around, stand up on the pedals while pumping your legs like crazy to get to the top of the hill again.
What a ride though, right? I don't know anyone who, once they get the hang of riding a bike doesn't love it. We never ever need to learn it over either, because once you've got the balance thing down, you don't forget it.
My forays into getting my life balanced have to start somewhere and it may as well be in my own neighborhood. So far, so good I guess. There is no hill to go full speed down here and no one at the bottom yelling, "CAR COMING!" so you need to watch it, but also not be too overly cautious.
We were lucky to have the kind of childhood that gave us the freedom to make judgements. Adults need to give themselves the same freedom as they come across bumps in the road of life. No training wheels allowed.
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