bump bump bump: Knocking on the door of the Trust

You know what they say: a fool never shuts up. Yeah.
After I was nearly car-jacked, I told everyone in the neighborhood.
I had several reasons/excuses for doing this.

1. Conversational topic. More chances to talk to the neighbors.
2. Maybe I could retrieve my sorry performance by getting more information on my attackers. Like the make of the car. I didn’t expect anything more than that.
3. Warn my neighbors that violence levels might be escalating.
4. Let people know I was on the lookout for the crap, and,
5. I wouldn’t react like a normal person when faced with it. As events already proved.

Two houses face the park from the other side. I don’t knock on doors in the neighborhood. I might not like what’s inside. Or, they might not want me to see it: good, bad, or indifferent.

One house has no windows and scabrous white paint. I am always curious about this house. People go and come every once in awhile. You can hear the game through the shoddy wooden door on weekend afternoons. The burly guy that lives there appears to fix heavy machinery in the front room or cars in the street. Sometimes he sits in the sun and I say hello. Why not now?

“Did you hear me screaming last night?” I ask him. “Wow, you would not believe.” And so on. “They were parked right there.” I point. “Did you happen to notice any strange cars?”

He gives me this look: assessing the most stupid person still breathing his air. I already know this about myself, so I smile at him. “Well, just be careful. I guess things are going nuts again.”

He acknowledges that with eyebrows. No words.

The lady next door has a house with an automatic gate, a small yard, the only house set back from the street for blocks. She has parking AND grass. Hey, here’s a winner: middle aged, prosperous, a property owner.
I have to wait a couple of days before I see her, going to her car.

“And they were parked right in front of your gate, blocking you in,” I say.

“I don’t know nothing about it,” she informs me. “I didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

“Oh, no, I know that.” I was surprised by this. “I was just hoping you maybe saw something, or that you’d be careful.”

“I didn’t see nothing.”

So I accomplished 1 and 5: Attention! Dumbass lives here! That still may have worked in my favor.