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Mysteries of Suburban Life

No matter when or where you have lived in the suburbs, if you have lived in the suburbs, you will have experienced the strange happenings, seen the odd houses, or been concerned about some of the other people who live there.

Listed are the top ten mysteries of suburban life:

Are those people next door raising raccoons?
Why are there so many different cars at that house, but almost never any sign of humans?
Are the people who live in this house as wild as their front yard? Why do these people have the same unruly acreage as me?
When will the neighbors ever be done putting on that addition to their house?
Why is the neighbor’s mailbox on the ground?
What exactly is under the tarp in the side yard?
Why are those one neighbors so noisy all night long?
Even more mysterious, why are those other neighbors so quiet all day and all night? Does anyone even live at that house?
How many times a day does that guy mow his lawn?
Why is this fence so high? Why is the tallest part around the front yard? What are they hiding?

As a quick rubric, suburb life is a subset of urban life. Just outside of the city is where suburbs lie.

Did you know the word suburbs is in the Bible? The idea of living near a city center is almost as old as life itself. Even back then there was probably a weird guy who stored his ladder on his roof “because it’s safe from thieves up there.” Even back then there were probably those guys who had a garage full of tools so they could supercharge their chariots. Even back then, at the beginning of written history, there were likely people who made their mailboxes look like a beagle or a steam train or the Batmobile.

These days we have people with “smart” homes, where nothing works when there’s a power outage. Those neighbors are the ones you find sitting at the park or wandering around the block aimlessly when there’s an outage. They seem to be bereft of purpose when there’s no electricity.

These days we have people with electric fences and guard dogs and gun safes. They’re also the ones we find at the police station, begging for help because a deer got into the flower garden.

And these days we have great neighbors who will lend us a ladder, so we can retrieve ours from where we left it on the roof.

Rainy Day Love

It isn’t the petrichor alone which gives rainy days their charm. It isn’t only the smell and the change of smells which help us all to love the downpour.

Some of us love to get wet. Others of us love to try not to get wet.

It is the fun of watching things wash down the street. It’s the pleasure of hearing the rain beating down on the roof above when we’re safe and sound under the roof.

We love the smell of wet earth. We love the way every plant seems to turn green with the rain.

We love how rain doesn’t seem to bother cows and horses. Lightning on the other hand…..

Lightning will scare the dogs and cats to hide under the bed. It will send the horses to shiver nervously under anything nearby.

Ducks huddle together in the bushes when they know a thunderstorm is on the way. Ducks don’t stay in the lake, they take flight out of there.

If we’re outside somewhere, enjoying our favorite outdoor activity, we might also take cover from lightning, but, like ducks on a pond, we might just stay out a little longer if the only discomfort is rain.

Besides making most everything cleaner, rain has the ability of straightening our moods.

And how many pray for rain when there’s a forest fire?

There are the fire fighters who rush through the bush, and there are the fire fighters who drop to their knees.

Then there are the fire fighters up in the sky, white and fluffy, turning grey, rolling through the scene, and pouring their dilution solution right down on top of the fire.

We all love the rain.

So You Think You’re in the Olympics

This is the time of year when a fistful of knuckleheads will end up at the local fitness center and throw the weights on the floor.

Why do they do that?

Because they saw it in the Olympic Games.

Never mind that the floor of the local fitness center is made of cement rather than wood like they use in many strength competitions.

The knuckleheads chip the concrete, then bellow as if they were something fierce in nature.

Yeah right knucklehead, you’re Olympic material, aren’t you? Yeah you are…in your own mind.

Then there are the imaginary Olympic swimmers. They jump in the lake, the local pool, or the backyard pool. They get going as fast as is humanly possible, slapping the water, punishing it, doing something circular with their arms and kicking their legs ferociously, only to find themselves three minutes later three yards farther than where they started.

“Are you sure you’re an Olympic swimmer?” asks the lifeguard.

“Are you sure you’re an Olympic swimmer?” ask the ladies doing water aerobics.

“What are you doing in my pool?” asks the nextdoor neighbor.

Then there’s the guy who watches the Olympic volleyball team and decides he wants to show off his spike at the beach volleyball courts. He winds up, jumps as high as he can, and slaps it right in the net.

“Aw dang, gimme another try. Somebody set me.”

He gets his wish, a perfectly arced set. Then he jumps again, this time higher, and he swings his arm at the ball, and misses. This time he’s in the net.

“Okay, I got this, gimme another shot.”

His third time jumping really is charming, and higher than the last. He can see over the net. He aims and hits the ball. It’s an actual spike! Nice job, v-ball dude, you spiked the ball into the ocean.

Who’s going to go get it?

It’s our Olympic swimmer. He runs to be the hero, spinning his arms long before he gets to the water. He’s in the water. He’s a bit faster now, because there’s a current. The same current that takes our volleyball out to sea, takes our Olympic swimmer out there too. They both bob up and down, rushing farther out with each wave.

In a short while we can no longer see them, but we’re not worried.

We’ve seen the movie and we know how it ends.

The Noble Tree

The noble tree.

What do we get from the tree?

On a hot day, we get shade. That’s a beautiful thing. We might take trees for granted until a hot day, and then the shade is so ultimately necessary. On a hot day the tree gets the appreciation it deserves. Sitting under a tree on a summer day is living beyond the average. There’s little better on this earth.

In a scientific sense, we get oxygen from trees. Many trees absorb carbons and expel simple oxygens. Humans rely on this process for life. There may be some funny folks who will tell you, “Yeah, but plankton puts off more oxygen than a tree.” That’s great, if you live on the ocean, where plankton lives. If you don’t happen to live on the ocean, then you probably rely more on trees for your precious supply of oxygen. The noble tree lives close to us, and we live close to it. We share and trade the things we don’t need.

From trees we get wood. From wood we get a variety of items so broad, we couldn’t list them all in one day. Wood forms the cradle, it shapes the casket. Wood makes the table, the chair, the walls, and the roof. The roof! Ha! There again, we get shade from the tree, though it is definitely better to sit under the tree as it grows on a hot summer day than under a roof. Wood makes yardsticks and cricket bats. Wood forms floors and billiard tables. Wood is used for the tops of Cholula bottles. Wood is used in fences, signposts, mile markers, and bridges. It is used in uncounted ways in construction.

Trees are where birds sing. If we enjoy birdsong, we might owe the tree something.

Trees are where jaguars hide.

Trees give us fruits and nuts in great variety.

And trees give us paper. Without it we wouldn’t have most of the things written, drawn, or charcoal-rubbed on paper. We wouldn’t have paper airplanes. We wouldn’t have something to roll up and swat at flys.

There are many more things.

What else do we get from the noble tree?

Dum On A Bike

There once was a smarter than average guy who attached sparklers to his spokes, lit the sparklers and rode around in the not-so-dark night on a 4th of July. It looked really cool as the sparkling fire spun, but the guy was wearing shorts, so his legs got burnt on every rotation.

More than one guy has built a jump on the edge of a lake. Many of them have jumped, caught air, and landed in the lake. It’s all fun and games unless the lake is too deep for you to recover your bike.

One time I saw a kid trying to do a backflip on a gap-jump on his BMX but he didn’t quite rotate far enough and landed on his face. He cried for a while, but eventually got back on his bike and rode away. Young bones bend instead of breaking.

Countless people have been caught on Halloween trying to ride a bike while wearing a cape, like a vampire. Guess where the cape ends up getting caught.

Not so dum, but funny anyway, is the gal who rode her road bike on one of those moving walkways, like at the airport. Hey, if you can get away with it, go for it. (I wonder how fast she was going.)

Soooo many bike races, of every kind, have been held on rainy days. When rain and dirt mix they make mud. When mud gets deep enough, and thick enough, you don’t just ride through it, you collect it. When you collect enough on your bike, the wheels no longer rotate. Racers end up carrying their bikes.

Another not so dum, but fun thing: Paniers can be a cool way to carry your stuff. Or your pets. Yes indeed, a lot of people let their pets ride around in the paniers.

Is it a coincidence that most dum things are done on BMX bikes? You can count on that guy next door for a laugh every time he tries to pick up some beer from the 7-11 and transport it home on his BMX. No he hasn’t invested in paniers, and he drops the case multiple times on his way.

And after the guys drink the beer, why do they always think it’s so funny to ride the toddler bikes? Get off it, old man, you’re going to break it!

Last, but not least of the dum, is the Florida man who tried to steal two bikes, while riding a bike. First off, why does he think he needs to steal bikes if he already has a bike? Next, how did he steer? With his knees? It doesn’t matter. He got caught, of course, because he couldn’t go far with all three bikes without tripping over himself. Hopefully the people got their stolen bikes back. The lesson to us all is: Be satisfied with what you’ve got, even when what you’ve got upstairs is not a lot.