To the Cyclists Outside My Window: I Hear You

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Is what I think I heard you say what you meant me to hear?

I hear you.

I don’t mean I’m tuned in to you spiritually or anything like that.

I mean I hear you. On the street. Outside my window.

When I moved to the North Shore from modern America, I was not only delighted by the number of old houses in this town, but also shocked by how close they sit to the street.

In the old days, building a house far from the road would have seemed crazy, I guess. If you don’t have a Toyota to get you from the house to the street, and you don’t have a snowplow service to magically clear a mile of driveway, why wouldn’t you simplify your life by plopping your house down right at the edge of the road? Besides, there was no Colonial Idol on TV to entertain you, and no sitting in front of ye olde compewter on Ye Olde Facebooke: so you wanted to hear the clip-clop of an approaching horse. Visitors! Something new and interesting!

My house, for example, reflects these priorities. About the time James Madison retired, a carpenter decided to build a house. Question: Where to put it? Answer: As close to the road as possible. So when you step out of the front door, you’re in the southbound lane dodging Harleys.

I don’t mean to exaggerate about the proximity of our house to our street. Let me simply say that our front yard is the width of a garden hose. You could unspool a roll of Charmin and conceal our front yard completely.

So no wonder I hear you.

On beautiful Massachusetts evenings, when the weather is so lovely, I want to open my windows, leave them open overnight. And on beautiful Massachusetts mornings, when the sun is up so early, you want to get out, get some exercise. So I don’t need to set an alarm for the morning. I have you. Outside my window.

Runners tend to be solo, and all you hear is their feet: thup thup thup thup thup thup thup thup. Bicyclists come in pairs, usually men, moving fast — and THEY YELL AT EACH OTHER! So, early in the morning, I hear extremely quick, amazingly loud snippets of stories as the bicyclists zip by:

“…HER, MAN! SHE’S GONNA SHAFT YOU…”

“…GET CAUGHT, BUT HE WAS CRAZED…”

“…DEAL WITH THE PROSTATE THING, SO…”

But best of all are the walkers. They’re more often women, and they chatter — they’re up at dawn, after all, and full of energy — and they think these historic houses they’re walking past are museums; the idea that people actually live here, and might be sleeping at this ungodly hour of the morning, never crosses their mind.

Plus, because they’re moving so much more slowly than the bicyclists, they spend significantly more time within earshot — which means I get way, way more information than I want:

“…ridiculous! So something had to give. Finally I just told him, this is not right. If I don’t get this baby weaned I’m going to scream! What in the…”

“…don’t know if it’s love. I like him. He’s really nice to me. But I like Paul too. Actually I like Paul better. Or maybe it was the margaritas, I don’t know. How…”

Really slow walkers — the ones who aren’t serious about exercise — offer the longest monologues:

 “…said stop! He wouldn’t stop. I grabbed his arm, I said stop it! He was like, what, are you gonna call the cops? I said, give it to me. I had to grab it out of his hand! I said this is not right! This is not the yellow I chose for this room! I actually threw the paintbrush at him. I couldn’t believe he was actually…”

Some early morning, groggy and half-awake, I’ll pick up something really incriminating. Or something really threatening. And I’ll have to take action. I’ll have to intervene. I’ll have to roll out of bed, lean out my window, and sound the alarm:

“Hey! I heard that!”

Doug Brendel
“The Outsidah“

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