Neighbors

When I moved into Sebring Gardens in October 1989 travel trailers mixed with mobile homes. The mobile homes are the same, but man, have the travel trailers grown. Space was tight to begin with, now the seasonal visitors in their massive mobile homes and massive fifth wheels with their accompanying towing vehicles are really shoehorned into the same small camp sites.

The Amazing Mr. Ripley
(there's a good novel of that title: very good)

My neighbors used to walk. I and a few others also ride a bike. These days more and more neighbors are obese: and clog the roads with golf carts. One guy I don't think I've seen outside his golf cart in several years: Ripley. His wife too prowls the park in a golf cart. She needs to walk marathons; she doesn't walk at all. Her obescity is not only porcine but bears an appearance of malevolence. Unlike Ripley, Mrs. Ripley does on occasion get out of her cart: to poke her nose where it doesn't belong: as I'll relate below.

On day a year or so ago, c. 2008, I saw Dan, our landlord, on land to the south he's added to his holdings, land he is clearing. I rode over to him on my mountain bike: good gear system, knobby tires, good for off road. The fat guy is sitting there in his golf cart. I talk to
Dan, the fat guy and I ignoring each other as usual. While I'm talking, the fat guy put his golf cart in reverse and backs right into me! He didn't say anything! Neither did Dan!

He didn't ask if I was OK, if my bike was OK, if he'd done any damage!

One time in 2008 or 2009, while I was teaching line dancing at the Highlands Seniors Social, I wanted to practice some dances with my friend Joyce: the widow of a line dancing teacher I'm confident was as great at it as she swears he was. I like to dance with Joyce: both ballroom and line dance. I asked Dan if it would be OK if we used the rec hall some day if nothing else was visibly going on there. Sure, he said.

So Joyce and I are in the rec hall one day, with her boom box, practicing the Singapore Swing. In walks that fat guy's obese wife. Fine, she's a resident: she can walk anywhere she wants, around the common buildings and grounds. But she comes up to us and demands to know what we're doing! She interrupts our dance!

I've lived among moron barbarians all my life, I'm used to it. Still, it rankles sometimes. Especially since I've lived here for twenty-two years whereas she and her husband are newcomers, not to mention much younger than Joyce or I. I never have told Dan how he forgot to inform his gestapo that he'd given me permission to use the common facilities: specifically the rec hall, specifically for line dancing.