All Yesterday's Birthdays

There is a weird relationship growing between myself and my neighbors. Single dad is being way cool and still keeps a cooler stocked with beers in between our apartments for just-in-case scenarios. He doesn't even drink beer. It's just to be nice. I always get a little skeptical of nice, but it's starting to stick and I'm past the fear of ending up in a kiddie pool with my shirt off posing for Polaroids. I loaned him The Grief Recovery Handbook and he was so appreciative it was amazing and I swear to god he has been different since. Even his kid has been a little happier because now single dad knows how to communicate and deal with the feelings that him and his son have been carrying since his wife passed away last year. We talk about it sometimes. That book is really awesome, by the way.

Now, the other neighbor has just started not bothering to get up off his patio and just shouts from his patio if he needs something from me and has just recently had me adjust my blinds so that he can watch my TV while he smokes and drinks beer, tequila or gimlets. I don't know how he remains so semi-functional and manages to juggle two girls while pursuing more girls. Of course, then he comes to me for dating advice, which is insane, and I just tell him that I'm not even in the parking lot of that supermarket, but tell him that a life less complicated is a life worth pursuing and you can really get to know yourself by abstaining from that stuff for a while. It really has helped me tons.

Now, together, both other neighbors have tracked the patterns and know the names of pretty much every female that is semi-decent looking to dudes in their 50s. They know what they drive, where they live, their hobbies at times, and they talk to them when they walk by. It's really weird, but I fear that I'm being linked to them by association due to proximity of my apartment to theirs. I also find myself occasionally attending an Art & Wine festival or other social events with them, but it's more for the kid. It takes a village, you know.

So, creepiness aside, I really like hanging out with my neighbor and his kid. The kid is great. I mean he says "Why?" a hundred times an hour, but he is just a really good kid. There is the normal shit like staring at me through my screen door, leaving gum on my patio, and asking me why I smoke, but he's just doing normal kid crap, right? We recently had a penis touching incident that we all had to deal with. It came down to playing lightsabers is totally cool, but you don't touch your friends lightsaber, ever. We don't see the kid who touched his lightsaber anymore and I think the problem is resolved.

Recently, he came over for his first babysitting session with me. I know, who the fuck would leave their kids with me?, but I've got tons of little brothers and sisters, so it's not that big of a deal. I was just kind of sitting around on a lazy Sunday and single dad neighbor asked if I could watch him while he ran to the store. I said it was no problem and ran back to my bathroom to stash a Club magazine that was in there in the closet. Neighbor Kid quickly turned into two and the other one had Crocs on, but I told him he could come in and play Xbox with us even though he had lame shoes on. I asked him to leave them outside in respect of coolness in my apartment. He obliged.

So, I introduced Neighbor Kid to Team Fortress 2 on Xbox Live and it was kind of hilarious. He didn't really figure out what was going on for a second. There were seven other people on the headset talking and it kind of freaked him out and he leaned over to me and said "They are saying bad words."

I whispered back to him that they could hear him, too. He got used to it and started talking back to them by asking them weird ten year old kid questions. He then started to get a little fragged by everyone else and said "Are they really trying to kill me?"

Apparently, some of the dudes were threatening him and I had to explain to him that he shouldn't take it personally and they were only talking about his dude. Actually, my dude.

So, his dad came back and he hung out for like an hour after that playing Xbox with me. It was kinda fun, but then I had to kick him and his friend out because that was plenty of kid time for a hungover Sunday.

Anyway. Yesterday, I went to his birthday by the apartment pool. There was pizza, tons of nutty, weird kids and even a magician. It was interesting and severely out of my comfort zone, but interesting. I talked with the disgruntled single moms about their unpleasant divorces and realized my ex was right. I live in the Bachelor/Bachelorette/Divorcee Arms apartment complex. There are Asian families to balance the singleness out, though. Otherwise, what children would attempt to drown in the pool when I lay next to it.

While my neighbor tried to throw some game on a single mom that was sweet as hell, but out of my weight class, I helped haul all of the presents back to my neighbor's apartment and clean up a bit. I see hitting on cute moms as a conflict of interest at birthday parties, but I swear watching my neighbor in social situations where there is any type of female involved is like watching the Discovery Channel during rutting week.

We were at a Chili Cook Off and dude was doing this look/stare from across this dance area in front of the band. The chick was gross. She looked like a catcher's mitt with lipstick on. So, ten minutes later he starts to push out his peacock feathers by doing some type of white-guy dance to a shitty WAR cover by the band to impress her. Apparently, this carried over to another Art & Wine festival that I did not attend and he even went so far as to dance with that girl's fat friend and flex around her tribal arm banned boyfriend. The whole thing just sounds exhausting to me, but it is somehow, super-entertaining.

The moral of the story is watching this behavior solidifies my choice to chill the fuck out. While I'm seeing all of this shit going on around me, he is only seeing "Fake tits,""Smokin' hot bodies," and "Cool drink of waters." I'm seeing camel toes, cankles, tribal armband tattoos, line dancetards and whatever else my social forest considers trees. It's much better to observe than hunt is all. I prefer to leave nature the way I found it and not bring anything home. Pro tip.