Creator1

I met our neighbors in one of the most unconventional ways. My family and I were on a walk and we had passed their home. After passing my wife said,

‘Do you hear that? It’s like a chirping, or an alarm.’

My kids chimed in that they also heard the noise, I listened, and even with my hearing loss, I could faintly hear it.

We walked back our path, which led us to our neighbors door. I rang their ring doorbell, and the chirping became super loud (another alarm above my head went off).

After several rings and no answer, I wondered what to do. Finally a voice came over the ring,

‘We’re not interested, thank you.’

I scowled, ‘what the fuck? I’m your neighbor, dude!’ I rudely said, re-approaching the doorbell, struggling to hear, frustrated by the beeping. I felt my feet squish.

‘Oh shit!’ I was heard saying. I picked up their doormat, which had been completely soaked. It weighed probably 15 pounds. We struggle to communicate over the loud blaring, finally exchanging cell numbers. We’re eventually able to Facetime and he tells us where a hidden key was.

The man on the other end was a short, white hair man. I’d later get to know that he was a retired (big airline) pilot. He had over 27,000 flight hours and also captained his own hot air balloon until he was 82 years old.

I eventually get into his home and discover his pipes had ruptured and his heat had somehow been turned on. Mold ran up the ways and there was roughly 6 inches of very warm water in the house. It was so bad that the cabinets crumbled into mulch when I touched it. The back door opened and water gushed out. The owners were in their cabin in another state and had to return home to an unlivable house.

After getting them set up with a water extraction expert/remediation group, they eventually got their home back together. They offered to take our whole family out to a very nice, very expensive Italian restaurant. We learned all about their very active life in their mid 80’s (here’s a glimpse, they are in the North Sea right now on a Viking cruise.)


One of my favorite things that Mr. S told me when I first met him ‘I just went to school in the 1960’s, and boy did that paint my life with color! I was a real hippie!’ He jovially said Funny coming from an airline pilot. Or there’s this one,
“I’d always take the London flights. I was there so often that I was a regular at a few places. If I took a Monday flight, I would have barbershop quartet night, if I took a Thursday flight, I went to ukulele group.” And then produced pictures of him in Hawaiian shirts in a bar with ukulele brandishing lads, surrounded by beer.

They tell us about how close they are to their children that are maybe 8-15 years older than us, about their travels, hobbies, and friends. They enjoy hearing about our lives and talking to/over-sugaring my kids.

They have become close friends of ours and de-facto mentors. They have the kind of life that I want when I’m their age, they are still active, staunchly political, have many friends, love their kids (and equally as important, their kids love them), they have a fun, exciting, happy life and are enjoying every second of it. She is helping me with the bookkeeping to shut down my business, and teach me the ropes of her business (as she runs her own bookkeeping business).

We meet with them weekly for coffee, sometimes at their house sometimes at ours (usually when the kids are at school). It’s like our own Tuesday’s with Morrie.