Mr. Church

I went through some of my old stuff when I was at my mom's house last weekend. I found these stories in a notebook that should be burned, except for the pages about Mr. Church. I wish Mr. Church still lived next door. After he died, his daughter's family moved in. I went to school with the eldest, a girl-woman who was extremely tall and had the singing voice of an angel. Later on, the parents got a divorce and for some reason, the husband got the house. Over the years, Mr. Church's Ex-Son-In-Law has become a world class prick. Crazy next door neighbor's greatest hits: has a personal license for his truck that says "ROWDY1", tried to get my basketball goal taken down, continuously calls the cops on my mom, starts his boat in the driveway, and after getting the city to make my mom put up a privacy fence, perches on the roof of his house. Mr. Church, can you hear me? It's time to come back home.

1. I was in the street playing catch with myself, yes, it can be done, when I hear the sound of a bleating lamb calling for help. Well as you can guess I'm quite disturbed, since I don't live on a farm AND an animal who speaks?! So I try to pinpoint where my new found cash cow, er, sheep is hiding. I walk next door where Mr. Church lives, an old man who spends his nights sitting in a lawn chair in his garage with the garage door opened enough to expose his feet. There the poor man is lying on his back in a bed of trash bags bleating, uh calling for help. I jetted to my house and let my ma handle the rest, while I peeped in on old man Church's plight.

2. Mr. Church had a grave in his backyard that said Judy. Being the morbid kid at age 9, I often invited my friends over for channelling Meriwether Lewis and jaunts to Judy's grave. I would tell a story of an evil husband murdering his wife and burying her in the backyard and later, feeling guilty, buying a headstone claiming it was for a dog. In reality it was for a dog, but it was a good story--anyways, a dog named Judy?

3. My little sister and I were eating Welch's grape juice popsicles (I don't know why I remember that) next to Mr. Church's driveway. A guy on a motorcycle tears down our street with the fuzz after him. Another copper heads him off causing him to crash into Mr. Church's garage door. (Causing quite a ruckus!) He then got manhandled by THE MAN, scarring my sister in the future with a fear of sirens and policemen, even Officer Friendly, and went directly to jail. Mr. Church didn't even come out--I think he was deaf.