This town is full of nuts

I love my house. I really do. And I love that we have a biggish yard. What I don't love is that our yard is right at the corner, totally exposed to any crackpot passing by, or, you know, living across the street. If it isn't one of the TP-less neighbor children begging to come over, then it's the woman who throws all her snow back out into the newly plowed street hollering to me from 50 feet away about my garden.

Well, now I've met a new crazy who is chockful of information he is more than happy to share with me. After a rousing game of "soccer" yesterday, the boys were playing on the ice pile next to the porch while I dug in the garden. I can't help it. The spring fever has me in its deadly grippe. Suddenly, I hear a voice announce something about "little daredevils" and turn to see a guy I can only vaguely describe as a Caucasian male, 16-30, wearing a hat and child-size backpack. We'll call him "Shaun"-- mostly because that is what he later told us his name was.

I sort of smirk and go back to my digging, but he continues to lurk around at the end of my walk, finally asking if I am working on a garden and offering me "tips to grow the perfect garden." I politely demure, and again go back to digging, avoiding the lingering snow piles. At this point, he seems to have gotten the point and walks across the street to the corner where he removes a red lighter from his pocket, drops it in the gutter, and kicks it down the sewer grate. I shake my head, jam the shovel into the dirt, and hear him yell, "Hey! You know your ball is way over here?" "Yes, thank you." The ball was about 5 feet from the sidewalk, still in our yard, minding its own pink swirly business.

I turn my back, dig, and hear the sound of the ball being kicked and hitting the telephone pole support wires in the corner of our yard. I look up to see him running back from the street to put the ball back pretty much where he found it. "I'm putting your ball back here because it blew into the street." I sigh and tell the kids they have 5 minutes left until we go inside, hoping against hope that they will stay where they are and not engage this man-boy in any way.

Ha! They of course hear the 5 minute warning as an invitation to run around the front of the house to roll around on a different ice pile right where the sidewalk should be. I kick the dirt clods off the shovel, lean it against the house, and go around the corner to see Shaun now lingering near the snow. "Dorian, please move away from the street," I call just as he rolls off the snow into the road. Shaun picks him up and deposits him back on the snow and gives the kids various warnings about the many dangers of snow and ice while Dorian yelps excitedly, "The man helped me up, Mama!" and Sebastian says, "Thanks for the advice, sir." "You can call me 'Shaun'-- 'sir' is my father's name."

Then, he starts asking the kids their names. "Where did you get the name 'Dorian'?" I don't know why I said it, because it isn't even true, but I mentioned The Picture of Dorian Gray. He surprises me by asking if my Dorian is two-faced, thereby displaying some knowledge of the story. I told him not yet and gave the kids the one minute warning. Then he asks if I know why Dorian Gray was inhuman. "Why's that?" His answer involved a voodoo woman, among other things, immediately shattering my briefly high opinion of him.

I inform the children the time has come to go inside, and after a cheery goodbye, Shaun vanished as mysteriously as he appeared.