So, not sure how this came up last night, but it is scary and funny all at the same time. Growing up, we had this guy living with his parents down the street from us. He was probably somewhere from 18 to 25 and he was ultra strange. He had an arm that didn’t work, and it would just hang at his side as he walked down the street past our house. I never saw him drive. He would just walk down the street back to his house from where ever he had been, carrying a brown paper bag in the good arm. Never knew what was in the bag.
So, we always thought he was scary, and he rarely talked to us kids. We never talked to him. If anything, we moved away from the street edge of the yard when we saw him coming. Even at ten years old, a kid senses when someone just ain’t right. Turns out we were right on the money.
A little girl was selling girl scout cookies one day. She rang the guy’s doorbell. He came to the door wearing nothing but a towel. He stood there and stared at her, then dropped the towel. Eeewww.
Then, another time, he got caught playing with himself while watching kids play at the pool! Double eww.
My memory is fuzzy, but I want to say that there was another time when he may have asked us kids about the girl that lived next door to us. As in, “who is that blond girl?” Creepy!
All in all, I am surprised that there was no parental outpouring of hatred for this guy. I tell you what, though. Kids are mean as all get out. What did we call him?
Beater.
I don’t know why that makes me laugh now, but Todd thinks it is funny, too. (So, maybe there is something wrong with both of us.) Also not sure why i had to write about this, but it is part of the landscape of my suburban Atlanta childhood and I didn’t want to forget it.