I walked across the street to load up the car. It was parked in front of the new neighbors' house who I had only met once since they moved in…about six months ago.
As my feet hit the curb, I realized the mom neighbor was out on her grass pushing her 2 year old son around on a little motorized car. The car was plastic and faded and made a sound like a broken blender full of gravel. The kid had a blue pacifier in his mouth and bed head.
She was pushing him straight at me.
I opened the door of the truck, threw some crap inside and waited to be greeted.
The mom stopped pushing at the edge of the grass abruptly ending the broken blender sound. Unusually hot for 8:30 am, the sun’s heat seemed to magnify even more in the sudden silence.
I wanted to say something friendly and casual to the kid/mom duo, having forgotten their names from our first introduction half a year prior, but nothing was coming to mind. Usually quick on my feet at mindless banter, I was stymied. Perhaps the heat was getting to me.
Uncomfortable in the silence and the looks of the expectant faces of mother/son who had traveled the few meters across their lawn to greet me, I blurted out, “Hey boy….” in a sort of southern drawl oddly reminiscent of Foghorn Leghorn.
I mentally kicked myself.
Hey boy? Really? You don’t speak to these people in months, and when you finally do, you sound like some sort of white plantation owner greeting a black sharecropper.
Thank God they’re not black… I think…
They don’t seem to mind my greeting however, and greet me back…the mother speaking to me through her child…as I was to her. Using the kids as some sort of transmission device, or ventriloquist dummy.
“Givin’ your mom a workout this morning, are you?”
“Well, daddy needs to get a new battery so I can drive it myself…”
“Make sure to keep it under the speed limit…wouldn’t want you getting pulled over…”
“Looks like you’re heading out”
“Yup. Just trying to get a jumpstart on the day…looks like it’s going to be a hot one! You should tell your mom you want to play in the sprinklers later.”
“Oh, we might just do that! After we take a bath!”
“Okay..well have fun…don’t wear your mom out with that thing!”
“I won’t!”
We said our quick goodbyes, both seemingly satisfied with the long overdue, albeit short, neighborly exchange. The awkward Foghorn Leghorn greeting I gave earlier was still not sitting well with me, but hopefully had gotten ‘glossed over’ over during the course of the chat and forgotten.
Later that day I washed my dog in the backyard with the garden hose, a scrub brush and some liquid soap. I called her "good girl" a lot and didn't mind when she shook several times trying free her coat of the cold water.
When it was all over with, I gave her a biscuit.