Things are not always what they seem

Monday, 7:10 pm

By Kate

I guess it’s a fact that much of the world passes me by without my notice. Even when it’s right under my nose. After having a conversation with the next door neighbors’ landlord a while ago, his cryptic remarks whipped my curiosity up to a fevered pitch. All is not well in my little corner of the world and I have been blithely unaware.

So what does one do when cryptic remarks lead one to think there is something going on under one’s nose that could explain much of why the next door neighbors’ landlord has seemed like such a jerk the last few weeks? Why, one calls one’s friend who is the most connected person in the neighborhood and who knows everything.

“So,” I asked, “What’s going on next door?”

“Oh,” she said, “Obviously you didn’t see her chasing him around the backyard with a shovel.”

Well, no, I’m afraid I missed that.

“You must not have read the newspaper the week before Thanksgiving, huh?”

Well, no. I didn’t.

I guess the short of it is that he’s now unemployed. And how might that tie in with the shovel in the backyard incident? Well, because his wife found out that he was having an affair with not one, not two, not even three different women, but four of them. Got caught on company time and was fired. The wife learned who one of them was and went to her house, with her shovel, and smashed all her windows. And then, apparently, decided to finish up with her husband’s head. In the backyard. I think she was upset. She’s also in a bit of trouble.

It was in the newspaper. The one I didn’t read.

So it would probably be safe to say that now I have a more complete understanding of why they probably won’t be here much longer and that it may not have as much to do with the landlord as I’d been led to believe. The landlord who is, understandably, at his wit’s end and who would, really, prefer not to deal than deal with it.

I’m pretty darned stunned, if you want to know. I’m usually pretty good at picking up on disturbances in the ether, but there wasn’t even a twitch on my something’s-up meter. I feel rather gullible. And really, really sorry for everyone concerned. People can get themselves into the most awful messes.