My neighbors

About 4 years ago, the neighbors to my right moved out and a new family moved in. I had previously been made aware of the father at the local little league baseball field. He was an assistant coach on his son’s team, and he would dress out in a full uniform (pants, socks, shoes, hat and batting gloves) when the other coaches would just be wearing the team jersey. He was a source of good-natured ridicule by opposing team's parents as well as his own. One of my favorite things about him was when he would be first base coach. One of his team would make it to first, and he would constantly tell the kid to “get on off” - meaning, as it were, to take a few steps closer to second while the opposing pitcher winds up. I always hoped one of the kids would ask him “What is it? Get on or get off?” He drove a Frito-Lay truck (prompting us to dub him “Micro-Chip”). He was goofy, to be sure. But he was harmless.

His wife is a receptionist at my vet, and she is as nice as can be. The kids are not rude. In fact they are usually quite polite – which is rare these days! The daughter is pre-teen and has a neighborhood friend that makes them both look like the twins in “The Shining”. Ooooooooooohhhh…

They are conservative - as are most people in my neighborhood. But they were the only ones to put their "Bush/Cheney" sign up under the Christmas tree in the front yard after the 2000 election. (With a hand written note on top proclaiming "Thank God".)

But no one in that family ever waves back to me except for the wife. The son (he is in high school now) used to be very nice to me but now only speaks to me when he’s hitting me up for school money drives. The daughter tried to sell me some candy bars once, and I guess I ruined it with her when I made no purchase. (Hey, I don’t like candy bars!)

Then I finally found out what was up.

They think I’m gay.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay, but I’m not. I swear!

Now I must point out that my brother lives with me. He has lived with me for a long time. A real long time… But that’s a different story. Anyway, my friend’s son (who goes to school with my neighbor’s son) told me that his reasoning is because I live with a guy who’s like my husband. My immediate reaction to that was “why do they think I’m the bitch?”

Proof that I am heterosexual:

• I don’t dress like a gay man. Gay men have style and elegance – something that I am incapable of even when I try. I am a slob, plain and simple.
  
• There are no flowers in my yard. There are probably gay men and women that don’t have flowers in their yards, but every gay man I am acquainted with have neat, tidy yards with nice flower beds. Mine – not so neat, not so tidy. But I do have a very large wisteria bush swallowing one end of my house and the trees in front of it.
  
• Gay men don’t have girlfriends that spend the night all the time. Granted, I seem to be girlfriend poor at the moment, but the ex-girlfriends were quite the fixtures at my house whilst we were dating.
  
• I fly an airplane and I am in a rock band. Okay, that’s not really proof of my sexuality – I just wanted to get those facts out on the table.

Anyway, I really don't know why they have taken this line of thought, and I guess it really doesn't bother me. At least I don't think it does... It just goes to show how narrow-minded people can be. That's small-town Mississippi in a nutshell. It also makes me very glad my parents made sure that I became educated at an early age.

I still wave at them when I drive by, and every now and then I am rewarded with a wave-back.