I don’t have more stories about the Richards specifically, but now that I’ve moved out of that Extremely Strange Neighborhood, I feel free to relate some more of the Wierd Shit that went on there. Some anwers to commonly asked questions:
1. It’s been pointed out to me that Golden State is an NBA franchise and not an institution of higher learning. To be fair, Diane is 84 and in an Alzheimer’s unit, and I know fuck all about sportsball. Perhaps her grandson lives in San Francisco. Regardless, we all had a good time and I was sent home with leftover bean dip.
2. I sometimes misspell things becuase I have multiple learning/reading disorders and Public Education in the US is terrible. I’m funny anyway.
3. Last I heard, Richard had gone to live with the other, less pyrotastic set of grandparents, so maybe there is hope for them yet.
(As always, all names have been changed to protect people’s privacy):
The neighborhood consists of a 206 pallette-swapped versions of the same three houses surrounding the largest hospital in the next six counties in any direction, surrounded immediately by three ranches on one side and roughly 100 miles of uninterrupted rocky mountain wildreness on the other. It’s seperated from the main city (If you can call a city with only the bars and Denny’s open after 9PM a city. Which you can’t) by a large mountain ridge and connected via a small canyon highway. Hence, the neighborhood consists primarily of:
Middle-Class Suburban White People ™
People who’d be too poor to afford this neighborhood normally, but are subsidized by the hospital. Olivia the ER nurse, for instance. They’re terrific.
People with Major Medical Conditions and Their familes, who live nearby, also subsidized by The Hospital.
Old Rural People who remember when Durango had only the train track and no paved roads and was mostly populated by cattle and will tell you they were present at the Alamo if you let them keep talking.
Wildlife that was here first and has no intention of moving.
This is a story about the first learning about the last.
Staci-With-An-I-From-Ventura-California introduced herself to me as that while I was walking the dog by the playground, as I tried to keep her preschooler twins (there are SO MANY goddamn twins in the neighborhood. I mean, we’re right next door to an IVF clinic BUT STILL) from jamming thier fingers up Charlie’s nose but fortunately he thinks children are hilarous and decided to lick what I sincerely hoped was jam off thier faces.
“Hi I’m [Gallus]. Hey, kids, be gentle with dogs-”
“Do you live here?” She asks in what I would find out later is her normal interrogative voice, but sounded to my untrained ear like a member of the spanish inquisition had reccived operatic training then took up chain smoking.
