Raring to Stop

So some guy started showing up in my front yard this week. I noticed his appearance almost immediately, as I have become suddenly and acutely sensitive to itinerant neighbors walking the sidewalk alongside of our yard. Since moving in I have seen far too much of a woman dog-walker who has assuredly seen too much of me in the mornings as I pull off my nighty-time boxers and head for the shower. (The wife likes to leave every shade in the house open, in her eternal -and apparently hopeless unless we tear off the roof- search for ‘good lighting.’) Coming from what could accurately be described as a ‘country condo,’ I’m not yet used to the idea of joggers, dog-walkers, bikers and such passing by outdoors, so each of these intruders show up as large, menacing blips on my radar.

Don’t get me wrong, for the most part we love this; it was one of the appeals of the neighborhood that attracted us when we were looking for a house. These folks here in town are uniformly friendly, ready to greet you with a smile and a nod. Unfortunately, everyone that crosses my path in the pre 9AM morning before I have the chance to recalibrate my internal IFF system at Dunkin Donuts is universally classified as a hostile. I can’t blame by body; it’s a survival mechanism. I sure as hell can’t make any accurate determinations of my own in those ungodly hours.

Anyway, it was exactly this time that this new bogey showed up. I watched him exit his vehicle from behind my curtain. He strode the sidewalk towards the intersection, a resolute set to his brow. Once there, however, he turned around. A guards pace! He wasn’t going anywhere; he was where he wanted to be! Right in front of my house.

Now, the ground that he patrolled also serves as the base for a neighborhood mailbox, so the thought crossed my mind that perhaps he was guarding the mail. An absurd thought, you think? Well maybe, but only until you consider that my local mail-hub is kinda (in)famous. Maybe the guy was actually a homeland security plant.

Could be too, that he was just waiting for friends. He was an older guy, and my weeks of living at the new joint have enabled me to make the observation that only older people use mailboxes nowadays. The younger generation is apparently all ‘e’-ed’ up…emails, online banking and bill paying, etc. There’s no doubt in my mind that 90%+ of the folks using this mailbox comprise CBS’s target audience, (Murder, She Mailed, anyone?) so maybe this guy was just hanging out at the local hotspot, looking to get a hot tip on the next fiery Canasta gathering going down.

I dressed, keeping a vigilant eye on the guy. Sometime between shirt and socks he must have withdrawn an item from his car, because he was flipping something in his hands as he gazed again across the intersection, a gunfighter staring down a storm. Its haft was cool, polished metal; I could see it glint from my dining room window. A child approached from across the way, and the man sprung into action, drawing his weapon, and stepping out into the street.

Time stopped, and so did traffic, as the stranger held his stop sign aloft.

Holy crow!

“Hey hon!” I called. “We have a crossing guard!” I hadn’t had a close encounter with a crossing guard since like the sixth grade, when one of my friends became a junior CG. He got a badge and everything, and around the pizza pies on weekends he’d shock us with the stories of what words actually came out of the mouths of kindergarteners when they were told to stop.

Ah, the good old days!

This new guy in the front yard didn’t seem to be an ass, though, as my friend assuredly was, drunk off the power of a sixth grade traffic lord. I watched him for a while until it was time for me to go, and it occurred to me that this guy -pacing, prepared, resolute- probably enjoyed his daily duty far more than I. On a good day for me, I can help eke some cash away from monolithic pharmaceutical companies. On a good day for him, he could keep little kids from getting run over by trucks.

The IFF then, even pre-coffee, kicked in, and identified the sashed gentleman as a friend.

Now I only need to work out a deal with him to delay that dog walker for a moment or two…