Remember Remember Etc.

It's Guy Fawkes Night here in England, so fireworks are happening over the river and I am watching them from inside my warm house like the spoiled islander I have become. Last year the island had a massive bonfire with mulled wine and sausages, but this year there is nothing. I can only imagine this is because too many old people heard us having fun in the community area last year and complained. With our neighbor the Commodore moving off the island and onto his three story boat/floating penthouse, it's occurred to me that StereoNinja and I might have to become the new island instigators to keep the committee on its toes and the steady stream of stern letters coming (they are hilarious). I'm thinking of starting with a massive Christmas display in the garden: a huge tree, the tackiest light up reindeer I can find, colored lights that flash in sequence, set to the most manic speed available, maybe Santa's sleigh on the roof if I can figure out how to get it up there.  I can maybe even get the neighbors next door to join up with me - they're crazy enough to not only build a house for the stray cat that comes around, but also throw said cat a housewarming party.

Where All The Parties At?

Apologies for backdating this post and the next one. I'm dealing with a sick cat who is 4,000 miles away from me and a small financial snafu caused by living in a different country from where my credit history does. I'm not abandoning NaBloPoMo, I'm just finessing the numbers a little bit. Also, don't worry, everything's fine.

I was doing pretty well for a while, homesickness-wise. I was even almost maybe a little bit starting to think of the place where I am actually living as my home. I'm part of things now: I commute to work like a person who lives here, I have relationships with my neighbours where we do things together, and I occasionally tell StereoNinja about places nearby he's not aware of, such as the Italian store in the next town over where I buy the Italian sausage I spent months trying to get my hands on and where you can also buy a jar of olives the size of your head for £2.50 ($4.00 USD).

But there's something about this time of year, the time between the lead up to Halloween and Thanksgiving, that really drives home the point that I am not, in fact, anywhere near my home. This is largely because England doesn't do these things. I mean Halloween exists, kind of, in that you can buy a pumpkin and carve it, if you're into that, but you'll buy that pumpkin at Sainbury's and they'll all be nearly the same size and roughly the same shape. There are no pumpkin sellers set up in abandoned parking lots (there are no abandoned parking lots at all actually) or pumpkin patches out the back of the local farm shop, and there are no pumpkins of unusual size, shape, nubbiness or color. I showed StereoNinja some photos on the internet of giant pumpkins from pumpkin growing contests and he was amazed: he had no idea a pumpkin could get that big or that growing them competitively was a thing you could do. Similarly, while kids do dress up and go trick or treating, it's not all of them, it's not traditional, and it's not in any way organized. StereoNinja had no idea what I was talking about when I asked him what time trick or treating was because the city does not specify what time trick or treating is allowed. And the decorating is almost non existent. If I dressed my house up the way people in American would for Halloween, with lights and spider webs and skeletons hanging from the tree and gravestones in the front yard and a scarecrow and the butt of a witch, I would at the very least get a stern letter from the island committee that my decorating has "spilled out" and advising me to clear the detritus from my garden post haste. And while Halloween is half-assed, Thanksgiving is entirely non-existent, though in all fairness, the other Americans I know living here and I all force pumpkin pie and a roast dinner on people in late November, so while it's not actually a thing, we do all seem to stubbornly refuse to give in and admit defeat.

Anyway, the point is, I wasn't homesick and now I am again, and I'm going to go eat the entire box of American food I ordered online that arrived today and drink all 24 cans of root beer it came with RIGHT NOW.

Drownin' In The Rain, We're Drownin' In The Rain

Remember when I said the water was receding? Well it's now worse than it was when it crested the last time. Lake Titicacao is indistinguishable from the river and it's all flowing so fast that we've been watching ducks go by backwards since they aren't strong enough to swim upstream or even stay in one place. Also rain is forecast in my town for at least the next five days. The only road out of the island is impassable by anything other than a monster truck, and conversations with other islanders about what we can do about it amounted to "Yeah, you're pretty much screwed." Being as my car is roughly the size of half a semi-truck tire, I'm effectively stranded in my house, conveniently (?) during reading week, meaning I don't have to swim to the station to catch a train to London for class, so I've got that going for me. StereoNinja bought us both waders today, which I put on to try them for size and am now still wearing them. I told StereoNinja it was for safety:

me: I'm leaving these on.
StereoNinja: You're going to just wear them around the house?
me: Well, in a couple of hours the water might be in the house.

But really it's just because I'm pretending to be a fisherman. I'm trapped, don't judge my methods of entertaining myself.

I'd like to point out that the last time it rained this much in England, my country didn't even exist yet. Speaking of my country, sorry about all the snow there most of you, and for those of you in California, if you can figure out a way to get this water over to you, you're more than welcome to have it.

Back At My Home On Whore Island

As I've mentioned before, I live on an island in the Thames on the outskirts of a very posh town I clearly don't belong in. The island is populated mostly by retirees and posh lunatics, or posh retirees who are lunatics. And it's not just an island, it's a community - there are organized functions and progressive dinners and notes slipped through your door inviting you to "supper". I was sure I was going to get thrown out.

Until Sunday, which was the day of the island's official bonfire party. £5 buys you a chance to stand next to a large fire, a sausage roll, and all the mulled wine you can drink. The fire wasn't lit yet when we got there, so we went to get some mulled wine and said hello to our next door neighbor - a 93 year old man who just spent most of the summer driving around France on his own, going from pub to pub, meeting new people and generally being more adventurous than I was at 20. He introduced us to another neighbor, an older lady who he claimed owns 10 Alfa Romeos but she corrected him - she has pared that down to "only" two. We chatted with them for a while until we noticed someone had lit the bonfire, so we walked over to check that out and to laugh at the men in charge of it, who were busily throwing all the things in the piles of wood meant to feed the bonfire through the night into it at once.

In the 15 minutes it took them to use up all the fuel for the fire, it had started to rain pretty hard, and people started wandering back to the garage where the wine and the sausage rolls were being distributed. It was there that I was introduced to the pilot. The pilot is a woman who does not live on the island, but just across the bridge from it so is kind of an honorary islander. As per my naming her the pilot, she flies passenger jets for a living. That's what she does now anyway; she used to be a veterinarian. Which is a hell of a career change, I thought, to which she replied, "Well, once you've wanked off a dog for 30 minutes to find out why none of his mates are being impregnated, you realize it might be time for a new career." I decided to just stand next to her all night. This turned out to be a good decision: I got to watch her give a sex education lecture to a grown man using his sausage roll ("You have a sausage, and I have a...roll.") (also, I got to add, in answer to his query of what the tomato sauce* represented, "Oh, that's just a timing issue.") and hear how much she loves Chicago (she used to fly there when she did transatlantic flights).

And then, somehow, and I swear to Xenu you guys, I was NOT the one who started it, there came a point in the conversation where she told us of her wish to learn to twirl nipple tassels in different directions. Obviously it was my obligation to tell her both that I knew exactly how to do that and that it was actually much easier than getting them to twirl in the same direction. And obviously they wanted to know why and I explained about the burlesque and the student show and that I even knew how to make them myself. The pilot was VERY excited, and before I knew it two things had happened: she'd told virtually everyone on the island that I was an expert at stripping, and she'd gotten half a dozen retired and semi-retired women to agree to a girly night at her house wherein, it seems, I will be teaching them to make and twirl nipple tassels. There was also some talk of me teaching them a general burlesque workshop and/or a basic burlesque class at the fitness center just next to the island.

So..... that happened.

I think I might fit in here better than I thought.

*ketchup.

My Opinion, And I Do Have One

The Post Office is fucking with me, and I'm starting to feel a little bit stabby about it.

This started way the hell back in May, while the bartender was in the hospital. I didn't even really notice it at first - truth is I don't get all that much mail, what with our modern, instant methods of communication, and it's not unusual to go a few days without seeing anything in the mailbox. But I had ordered a couple of t-shirts and realized that it had been over a week and they hadn't shown up, and that it also seemed to be taking an extraordinarily long time for my Gilmore Girls Season 2 DVDs that I purchased from Amazon to arrive (fuck you, that show is awesome). And just as it was dawning on me that maybe there was a problem, I got phone calls from the place where I rent a storage locker to house all nine of my Christmas trees when it's not the season of Christmas trees and from my insurance company, both of whom snippily informed me that they'd sent me mail that had been returned with no forwarding address and, you know, I really should have informed them of the fact that I was moving ahead of time. Except, um, I haven't moved. In, like, four years. The phone calls came when I was in England, so there wasn't a whole lot I could do at the time.

The nearest I can figure out, the screw up has something to do with my neighbor moving out. This would make some sense - my now former neighbor, while nice enough, is a colossal fucking idiot. Shortly after he first moved in I got notices from both the gas and the electric companies of the cancellation of my accounts and the final bills. As I had not cancelled any accounts I called them up and was told my accounts had been cancelled because I had moved and someone else was living there. I explained that I had NOT moved, someone else most certainly the fuck was not living there and fix it now. Turns out the guy who had moved in across the hall didn't actually know his address and was giving all the utility companies mine. Everything got straightened out, he was all "dude, my bad" and life went on as normal. Except, it seems, that he never did actually learn his address, and when he moved out and changed his address with USPS he again gave them mine. And in the infinite wisdom of the Post Office, they assumed that meant that I had moved, so despite the fact that I had filled out no change of address card they were sending all my mail back from whence it came, with a note saying I had left no forwarding address, which indeed I hadn't, BECAUSE I HAD NOT FUCKING MOVED.

Upon my return, I got in touch with them, explained that I had gotten no mail for an entire month and asked that they please stop doing whatever it was they were doing and go ahead and actually deliver my mail. In the meantime, I got in touch with every single vendor I had purchase something from that had not arrived, and begged them to resend the packages to my office where I seem to have more success with actually receiving mail.

I got a phone call from the post office apologizing and saying the problem had been fixed and for a while it seemed that it had. I got a trickle of things in, occasionally, covered in weird rerouting stickers, and I assumed all was back to normal. Which turned out to be a poor assumption. Again, I started getting a mess of phone calls and e-mails from friends who'd tried sending me things, my employer who'd tried to mail my pay stub, the insurance company who'd sent my cards again only to have them returned a second time - was I sure I hadn't moved? Did I actually know my own address? I fired off a message to them on their website, with the former case number, the name of the person who said it had been fixed, a description of how I knew it had not AT ALL been fixed, and a plea to please ACTUALLY FIX IT. At the bottom where it says "How should we contact you?" I checked off "e-mail" and sent the thing off with the understanding that I would be e-mailed an update within three business days.

I received no such e-mail. Instead I received a voicemail from a man at the post office asking me to call back to "discuss" the issue with a number. Which I called. FOUR TIMES. Four times I called the number he left, and four times it rang and rang and rang for 10 minutes and was followed by a shrill beepy sound and a click. Two days later, the same man called me AGAIN, left the SAME number, which I called again TWO MORE TIMES to the same effect, i.e. NONE. I gave up and resigned myself with having to accept that I might never have home mail service again.

And then, yesterday, I finally get an e-mail from USPS. Does it tell me they've looked into and resolved my issue? Do they ask me for more information on the problem, like dates and such forth? Does it include a working phone number that either gets answered or goes to voicemail? No. It reads thusly:

"The United States Postal Service® (USPS®) would like to thank you for your recent E-mail. Your opinions are very important to the USPS® as we continually monitor and improve customer service.

You can provide feedback on your E-mail experience by completing a brief 5 minute survey. To participate in the survey, click on the Web address below. For your convenience, the survey is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through July 7, 2011, from any computer with Internet access."

Oh really, post office, you want my opinion do you? WELL HERE IT IS. My opinion is that your entire organization should get stabbed in the eye. Right in the eye, with a blunt pencil. My opinion is that this is a vast conspiracy to try and trick me into paying for a PO Box by pretending to be incompetent at delivering mail to my home. My opinion is that you should actually take some sort of action to resolve the problem before you ask me my opinion about it. My opinion is that I hate you.

My Trip To The ER

Coming home from blighty, and for the last two days I was there, I found I was having a fair amount of back pain near the place where my right kidney resides. It got progressively worse and by Friday I could barely move. I was told repeatedly by many people to get my ass to the doctor, but I am stubborn and I was convinced all I needed was Tylenol, a heating pad and time. Until I realized I had started running a fever. Even then, I was sure it could wait til morning when the bartender would be home from work and I could drive myself there in the car. My neighbors Sugar and Spice were not having any of it. Spice called me from downstairs where they were watching the hockey game. "[Sugar] says she had a friend who died because of a kidney infection. She says if you don't come down here right now, [the Marine] is going to come up there and hog tie you and carry you to the car." Under those circumstances I allowed them to drive me to Northwestern (after the hockey game of course. Come on, it was Game 7 of the Stanley Cup!).
We arrived at Northwestern Emergency and checked me in. I got a fancy bracelet and was quickly called in to see the nurse. "I'm running a fever and I have a lot of pain in my right kidney," I told her.
"How do you know it's your kidney?" she asked.
This struck me as a trick question, but then again I had a fever. "Um, well, it's in the place where they taught me in biology class my kidney is supposed to be, so I just figured..." This seemed to be a satisfactory answer. She took my temperature (99.3), gave me a cup to pee in and told me to go to the desk if I suddenly got any worse.
I went and sat with Sugar and Spice. I didn't want to sit. I was in pain and had a fever and I wanted to lay down. But as all the seats in the waiting room have metal arms and it's not socially acceptable to lay on the floor in public I ended up curling myself into an upright fetal position and resting my head on my knees. And we waited.
And we waited.
The only good thing about having to go to the ER is that they are endlessly entertaining. There was a guy who worked there in some capacity (crowd control?) we named "Bernie Mac Guy" because he bore a resemblance to Bernie Mac and he was pimping out in a black suit of indeterminate material, a red shirt, a black tie and an incongruous pair of white latex gloves. I announced I wanted to marry him (fever). There was also a decrepit old man doing Sanford and Son impressions obnoxiously enough that Bernie Mac Guy told him if he didn't shut up he'd be put away in a room by himself. My favorite was a kid who may or may not have been in his mid twenties who I named Captain Vomit. Captain Vomit was so named because he was clearly going through severe withdrawal. He'd been issued a bed pan and every 15 minutes or so he would violently throw up into it and then button it with a pitiful moan of "Oooohh God, I want to die." God did not appear to be listening. But Captain Vomit is obviously much smarter than I, because as I was trying to get comfortable curled into a ball in a hard plastic chair, Captain Vomit took his bed pan and his blanket and lay down right in the middle of the waiting room floor. The staff yelled at him for some time to get up to no avail. Eventually they gave up and, get this people, wheeled a bed in for him to lay in so he would get off the floor. I was furious. "Is that it?" I complained to Spice. "All I had to do was lay on the fucking floor and they would have brought me a bed? Man, this is bullshit." And we waited.
While all this was going on, I was progressively getting worse. My legs were numb from my knees to my ass because of the way I was sitting, and the fever was making me too nauseous to hold my head up. Sugar and Spice were carrying on a conversation that I was listening to, but not much participating in because speaking (let alone thinking) was an effort. But apparently I tried. And apparently when I'm in a fever delirium I am fucking hilarious. It was related to me later (and mind you, I have almost no memory of any of this) that while they were talking I would appear to drift off to sleep, only to abruptly pop my head up every 20 minutes, make a completely inappropriate sexual comment, and immediately go back to sleep. Some of the things I allegedly said (anyone I'm related to would do well to stop reading right here and go to the next paragraph) are that "sperm is delicious!", that in fact I was a "come connoisseur" and therefore knew what I was talking about, and that a fun thing I found out I liked was being slapped in the face. I can't really argue with them - these are all things that I would definitely think, just not usually out loud.
At some point it became clear to the pair of them that I was in way worse shape than when I got there and Sugar talked the nurse into taking my temperature again, which had rocketed up to 102.2 over the two hours we'd been sitting there. The nurse gave me some Motrin and then I sat there and whined for the next 20 minutes about "when is it going to wooooooooork" until it kicked in. And we waited.
By this time it was past 1:30 in the morning and Sugar had taken a cab home. Spice and I sat discussing something (probably sex toys) for another hour or so until an enormous group of enormous people came in. They were all dressed like skanks, entirely in white, and every single one had blood on their clothes somewhere. It seemed they had been at a white party and several people had been stabbed, shot or both. One woman had poured herself into an outfit three sizes too small and made out of terrycloth with huge gold buttons down the front. "I want an outfit made out of a towel," I pouted to Spice, who pissed herself laughing. In the midst of this commotion my name was finally called.
The doctor, who was pleasantly surprised when we applauded her entrance to the room, told me I had a kidney infection and possibly a kidney stone, but that I would need a CT scan to find out about that last part. She then put me on a fluid drip and ran away with several vials of my blood. I was now very excited because 1) I love having an IV because it makes me feel important and 2) I had never had a CT scan before so I was curious and besides, how could a giant doughnut not be fun?
It turns out a CT scan is mostly just lonely because there's no one in there with you. The highlight was the contrast fluid. They ran it into my IV and a few seconds later everything from my neck to my vajay was really really hot for about 30 seconds. It was awesome. They did this twice. Boo-yah.
Anyway, long story even longer, I did not have a kidney stone so they gave me some antibiotics, an anti nausea and some Vicodin and sent me away. Total hospital time: 8 hours. Total hospital bill: just under $11,000. Hilarious moments I'm still giggling at a month later and that freak out the marine: Priceless.
Sugar and Spice: Thank you so much for out stubborning me and then sitting with me in the psych ward for the injured all night! You are both princesses among women.

You Killed My Republic. Prepare To Die.

The bartender and I are pretending to visit our neighbors (we are actually visiting their awesome cats).

Me: I was just watching The Princess Bride. It's on Bravo. [The bartender] has never seen it before. He hates it.

Neighbor girl: Seriously?

The bartender: How is that movie supposed to be funny? It's so stupid.

The ex-marine: WHAT? ARE YOU A COMMUNIST?!?!?!?

Even Mr. Rogers Would Be Aggravated

The occupants of my six flat building are as follows: Nice couple with annoying dog, nice lady with cat, nice girls who take a lot of baths in the jacuzzi tub, nice couple with no dog, the bartender and me, and Crazy Next Door. It's a miracle, really, that I've managed to get this far into my lease without blogging about Crazy Next Door.

Crazy Next Door is a petite, probably alcoholic (based on the case of Old Style she hauls up three flights of stairs daily), apparently independently wealthy (based on the food she has delivered daily, also the fact that no one has ever seen her go to a job) woman who smells like a walking ashtray and vacillates between creepy and weird, mean and weird, and drunken psycho. In the summer she enjoys browning her already crispy leather skin on the back porch, to the bartender's horror. In the winter, she tends to favor passing out drunk while forgetting to let her animals inside. All year round she entertains a handful of questionable friends.

A while back I had ordered a shirt and a bracelet from the internets because they were on sale and I hate all my clothes. I tracked my shipment with my handy FedEx tracking number, and on March 5th my package was deemed delivered. Except when I got home there was nothing there. I called FedEx, who again told me I had it even though I didn't have it. FedEx did their best to look for it on their end but couldn't find it. A week passed. Deeming the package lost I filed a claim with FedEx and waited. This past Tuesday I came home from work to find a Macy's bag hanging on my doorknob. It contained the skirt and bracelet I had ordered, which were without their original packaging and now reeked of smoke. While I went around lamenting the incompetence of FedEx, here Crazy had stolen my package, opened it, kept it for THREE WEEKS and then attempted to anonymously return it without bothering to try to mask her scent. And most disturbing of all, no one in the building was surprised.

No one was surprised, of course, because previous to this she had:

• left a bag of dog shit at couple with annoying dog's back door. The shit was from her dog not theirs;
• gotten caught by the building engineer throwing her garbage into the yard from her third floor porch;
• deliberately or accidentally poured a bottle of whiskey out on the porch, which ran down to the two proches below it and cause our entire backyard to smell like Maker's Mark for a week;
• yelled at couple with no dog when one of HER friends wandered into THEIR apartment because they'd forgotten to lock the door;
• accused the agent and me of spying on her when I opened the door so he could leave and she happened to be standing in the hallway;
• etc. etc.

I look forward to wearing my new clothes once they've been fumigated and disinfected.

2007 In Review

I have resolved to make no New Years resolutions for 2008. So therefore, if I accomplish anything this year, it would actually make me a failure. And who wants to be a failure, right? Exactly.



I did, however, accomplish quite a bit this year. To recap:

• I learned how to make a french silk pie from scratch. Prior to this, I though french silk pie was a proprietary pie of Baker's Square and that the recipe was a closely guarded secret, like the formula for Coke, or the inner workings of the Daley administration. It's not though. Plus mine is better.
• I moved. Into an apartment with its very own jacuzzi tub, which is great, a crazy drunken next door neighbor, which is not great, and across the street from a candy store, which can only be described as dangerous.
• I read 48 books. This is a mere two more books than Heather read, as she nearly caught me at the end. Among my favorites: a re-read of The Count of Monte Cristo, The Kite Runner (trendy novel readers of the world, unite!), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and The Great Gatsby, which I somehow managed to miss reading in high school. Heather has invited me to "taunt her a second time", so let Reading Challenge 2008 begin! I am about to begin book #2.
• I got myself a boyfriend. The agent is responsible for such things as finding my apartment, pointing out that I am a HUGE geek after I recited Star Wars: A New Hope for him in its entirety, 10 extra pounds, my first visit to New Mexico, learning how to meditate, trips to go get pie halfway across town at 11:30 at night (he will tell you I am actually the one responsible for this. Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.), my addictions to The Office and Flight of the Conchords, a great deal of singing in harmony, much childish giggling and a general sense of happiness and well being. Why didn't I think of this before?
• The Browns finished the season 10-6, and beat the Ravens twice. While this probably doesn't count as a personal accomplishment of mine, I did relearn how wonderful it feels to root for a football team that is actually adept at, you know, playing football.
• I hosted my first Thanksgiving. This involved another accomplishment of mine which is roasting my first turkey. The event got rave reviews. My inner Martha Stewart stills glows with pride.

I plan to have many weird adventures to blog about in 2008. Stay tuned.

If That's Moving Up Than I'm Moving Out

My boyfriend, the agent, is getting ready to move next week, and I'm not sure I like the change in neighbors. Right now he lives next door to a guy I call American Idol. American Idol amuses the hell out of me. I've never seen the guy. I have heard him though, because he sings very loudly, very badly and very often. He really means it too. He sings huge epic Celine Dion type songs in a wobbly vibrato that is only slightly off key. His music is best enjoyed from the bathroom which seems to be directly opposite his bedroom. He will be missed.

On the other side, there is La Casa Fiesta. They always have something to celebrate, which they do by encouraging the kids to run around half the night to the sounds of pre-recorded mariachis. I frequently have inexplicable urges to go out and buy maracas.

Directly above the agent live the Lead People. At first I assumed giants must be living up there, based on the heavy sound of their walking. Then I saw them coming up the back stairs and they appear to be normal sized. This is how I surmised they must be made of lead, because their outside appearance couldn't account for the extreme loudness of their footfalls. I told the agent about it and urged him not to lick them; understandably he balked at this comment, as he's not in the habit of licking his neighbors.

Though all these people can be slightly annoying at times, such as when I'm trying to sleep, they are all quite charming compared to the new neighbor I encountered on my first visit to see the new place. After the agent took me on the tour we went out the back door. I looked up and saw The Biggest Spider I Have Ever Seen In My Life*. "Ok," I said, "THAT has to go or I am never ever coming back here again." Even the agent, friend of all living creatures, agreed that it was exceptionally huge. I ran from the porch like it was on fire and stood by the car watching it spin its GIANT web. The agent came to check on me, but I had already crossed the threshold into full on crazy: "Look at it! It's as big as my fist!" The next time we went over it was gone, but I don't know. You can't trust those monsters.

All in all, though I'll miss the vocal stylings of American Idol and head shattering percussion of the Lead People, as long as the spiders stay away, I'm very excited about the new place. Stay away from me spiders.

*Live. Thanks to Eric for the e-mail containing a photo of a camel spider from Iraq. That thing was like a freaking lobster and the sight prevented me from eating for an entire day.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

So the guy that called the police when he found a skull boiling in a pot at some guys house? Yeah, we know that guy. He's a hairdresser and part time drag queen. His brother cuts the bartender's hair. We saw him at the Social Distortion show last October dressed up like a cat with giant boobs and platform shoes.

Chicago. It's a small town, it just happens to have 3 million people in it.

That's A Parent

I'm having a kid.

Don't panic, I'm not actually pregnant or anything. It's just that I decided last week that I'm having a kid sometime in the next four years or so, even if I have to go out and buy the sperm. Because kids rock.

I was walking home from work last week. As I was walking past a house on my street about a block up from mine, out popped the cutest kid ever. He was one of those super white kids. You know the kind, with the white blonde hair and pale skin and you just know they glow in the dark? He jumped out on the porch as I walked by his house. "Hi!" he said.

I assumed he was talking to the kids a couple houses down and not to me, because I was a stranger, but no. When I didn't answer him he tried again.

"HI!" he shouted.

"Hi!" I said.

"Do you like my NEW SHOES?"

Either he was never taught the lesson about not talking to strangers or else he just wasn't down with that, because the kid had no fear.

"I do like your shoes," I said. "They're very nice."

"WATCH ME!" he shouted with glee. "They make me go FAST!" and with that he took off running down the street to when the other kids were playing.

I was completely charmed right out of my shoes. Two seconds later I became very afraid for him, because what if I'd been a kidnapper or something?

And that was when I decided I wanted a kid just like him. Except that doesn't talk to strangers.