To understand this, you need to know that our town issues us recycling tubs which are ordinary open bins for your bottles/can/paper recyling.
Some months ago a new family moved into the neighborhood a few doors down my house. I’m not the type to socialize with the neighbors a lot, but I’d seen them (mostly her) sometimes while I’m doing my half hour walk, and we’d nod at each other, maybe say hello. But I started noticing something strange: every single week her recycling tub would be filled to a towering heap with bleach bottles. What must have been over a dozen gallon sized bottles of store brand bleach. Week after week after week.
Who the hell uses that much bleach??? Can you make some illegal drug from bleach? Could they maybe be using it to dissolve an inconvenient body? Or maybe just cover up the stench from one? My husband and I traded increasingly strange theories for what could be going on.
Finally I ‘happened’ to run into the woman while she was putting out the recycling tub and just had to ask her what was with all the bleach. She confessed
[SPOILER] that her husband had his own little house painting company, and they used the bleach in powerwashing houses before painting them.
So mundane![/SPOILER]
So, have you ever had your suspicious wildly aroused by something strange that your neighbor/coworker does?
For this story, it’s important to understand that I am extremely cheap. Like, really stingy. Anyway.
I live across the street from our local Pentecostal church. No snakes, but plenty of rolling on the floor, speaking in tongues, and just generally doing whatever the Holy Spirit moves you to do. I’m not complaining; they’re good neighbors, quiet at night, and they don’t throw beer bottles on my lawn. But I can’t help but notice that I can see their WiFi network, with a pretty good signal strength, and I likewise can’t help but notice that I pay $40 a month for internet. Naturally, I reason that Jesus would totally give me his WiFi password if I asked him for it, I conclude that I should be using these folks’ WiFi network and then cancelling my own service. Logical, right?
But since I don’t just want to go over and ask for it, I decide that I’ll simply attend on Easter Sunday, ask for the WiFi password so I can follow along on my iTouch*, and watch the service long enough to slip out the back. It’s Easter, right? Lots and lots of Christmas-and-Easter Christians who most everybody won’t recognize, and so I won’t stand out. So I get home from work at 10:15 a.m.** on Easter Sunday, pour myself a drink, and start to head over when I notice something strange. There are no cars in the parking lot of the church on Easter Sunday ten minutes before the service starts. What gives? I ducked back inside, checked their website, and confirmed that they were having Easter Sunday services at 10:30. No mention of an alternate location. But there’s not a car in the lot nor a sound coming from the church. No people in front, not a hint of activity. Too weird. I was too unnerved to go in. Their attendance is always low, but this was just too strange.
*My liberal arts background threatened to betray me here. I was going to suggest that I might be comparing different translations during the service when my roommate pointed out that these folks are likely not big fans of the historical-critical method of Biblical analysis or translations other than the KJV.
Jesus told them your plan so they cancelled the service.
I dont know about slipping out the back. One of my co-workers is Apostolic, and I went to a function at her church, and as I walked in everyone came over and welcomed me, and asked if I was Faith’s friend, and told me how nice it was to see me. I’m Catholic, and there are people I’ve seen at at Mass for 20 years whose names I still don’t know, so the enthusiastic greeting unnerved me. They will probably have their eyes on you the whole service.
This is kind of stupid, but about 30 years ago I saw a card in a coworkers Rolodex that just had the handwritten title “Headquarters” and a phone number. Curiousity got the better of me and I dialed the number. It was a barber shop.
When we moved into our house, 15 years ago, we noticed the house next door was, well, odd. The yard looked abandoned. The grass was a foot high and there were rotting apples from the previous fall all over the concrete back yard, from the two apple trees. The gate in the chainlink fence had a padlock as did the front door.
No lights on inside until 11:30 each night when the house lit up like Christmas, and the smell of burning garlic filled our bedroom that faced their kitchen exhaust fan.
A few weeks after moving in we saw two small boys, maybe 4 and 6 wandering around the yard. They were’t really playing, just walking around. They were out for maybe an hour.
We didn’t see them again for several weeks. I went to the fence and asked if I could talk to their mom. They said she didn’t speak english and she’d be mad if they came inside before they were supposed to. We saw the boys maybe 10 times in the 14 years we shared a fence.
Maybe two years later we discovered they had an older sister about 15. We saw the two boys and the sister pushing an stroller across the street as mom and dad loaded up the car. I stopped to talk to the parents, but they said they were in a hurry and couldn’t chat. BTW, the mom spoke perfect english.
Then, in the midst of the housing down turn a for sale sign went up for one day. It was gone the next, as were they.
We decided they must be in witness protection and their cover was blown.
A nice couple with a new born moved in. They aren’t a bit weird. Well, they are IT people.
