The Old Man and His Excuses

12^th July 2012

Dear Cassi,

Over the past few months there has been a terrible eye sore on my block. Old Ken, who is obsessed with working on everyone’s lawn, has been mooning the neighborhood. This action has drawn complaints from his wife and Pickles, but other than myself no one took action.

         

On hearing the distaste of this action Ken would simply say, “It’s my hips” and go about showing the world his back end. His wife asked him to put on overalls and he would refuse, a belt did little good, and he refused to buy new shirts. At some point I took matters into my own hands and found him a half dozen long extra large shirts. He promptly folded these and put them in his closet looking after them because of their newness.

         

This state of affairs aggravated me so and I took the subject to him again asking why the shirts were gathering dust. “You see what’s hanging in my garage? I got paint on that one so I had to wash it,” he said. He further explained that his wife would not have him get them dirty. I’d have taken this to the neighborhood watch if I thought it would have addressed the issue, but you know I have distaste for asking for help. Asking for help has never served me.

         

It came then that my own long work shirts had taken one too many bleachings, and so, had holes. I replaced my work shirts and gave the old to Ken to which he stated that he couldn’t use that many shirts. “Then throw out the one’s that can’t cover your ass!” I shot back at him and made clear that I meant business.

         

Just yesterday I talked to his wife about this and said there should be no further issue as I had given Ken old shirts to put on when working in the yard. She looked at me as if I had said the sky was falling and asked what I meant. It turned out that she had never given her husband any flack about getting shirts dirty and knew nothing of the last batch I had given him.

         

“That’s horse shit,” his wife said to me when I told her that her husband had blamed her for the past few months of is back end hanging out. I guess that goes to show you that a good talk over something can carve away a lot of nonsense.

         

Everyone on the block is happy that this has been dealt with and we can all go about our business back end free. In this world there are problems that need to be seen to and many who will just huff about them. I’m not one of those folks.

Do more than talk, little sister,

                                                                                             

Richard Leland Neal