Friday, March 7, 2008

Featured Neighbor: Automo-Living Room

There is a man who lives down the street from us and every single time I drive past his house (which is twice every day at least) he is sitting in his car. The car is running, the parking lights are on and he, well, he is just chillin' in the driveway. It goes without saying that this is weird. But the intriguing part is that it doesn't matter what time of day it is.

He is there first thing in the morning often reading the newspaper. In the afternoon sometimes he naps. In the spring his sits in there with the windows down clearly enjoying the fresh air. In the winter sometimes the car will sit there running with all the snow still on it. Which begs the question which would be weirder, to scrape all the snow off so he can see out the windows or not to bother since he is isn't going anywhere anyway.

Now, I don't mean to come off as if I am stalking the guy but this is impossible to miss. And once you've noticed, even more impossible to ignore. I decided that the whole situation would somehow be less weird if I could get him to wave at me. So I tried to get him to wave. I would wave as I drove by on my way to work in the morning. Nothing! I waved as I ran by with the dog on the weekends. Na-da. I even contemplated a friendly toot-wave combo. But I've already discussed how I feel about honkers so that was clearly not an option. I thought maybe if I rolled down the window and reached my hand out to wave that would work. Maybe he couldn't see my hand inside the car. It didn't work. I saw not even the slightest movement he just stared blankly through the windshield.

Unable to make any sense of this car-sitting madness I mentioned it to Chris. " Dude, he was just sitting there drinking a cup of coffee and reading what appeared to be the most enormous hard cover book ever in his car." Chris shot me a dubious glance. "So let me get this straight" he said " he just sits in his car? All.."

"With it running!" I interjected.

"OK, OK, with it running, all day long?"

"YES" I scream while jumping up and down like Rumpelstiltskin. "Isn't this weird?"

"Yes it is weird, please stop jumping up and down like that. You look like Rumpelstiltskin or something"

"NO! I mean the guy in the car! Isn't that weird?" I asked rolling my eyes. " He won't even wave. I've been waving at him for months and it's like he can't even see me."

Chris agreed to make a point of looking the next day when he drove by. When I got home from work the next afternoon, I burst through the back door yelling "Did you see him?? He is out there right now! Did you? Did you see?"

Chris fixed me with a very serious stare. "Yes. I saw him. Oh man, that is so weird."

"I told you!" I crowed. After which we immediately sat down to discuss all the possible reasons that this guy is using his car as an alternate living room. These are the possible scenarios that we came up with:

  1. His wife is really, really mean and suffers from acute motion sickness. Thus, the car is his only safe haven.
  2. He is not a real person but, in fact, a wax figure that the people living in the house pose in different positions to freak out their neighbors. *If this is correct, I would like to meet and befriend these people. They sound awesome.
  3. He can not afford to heat his home so he sits in his car with he heater running instead.
  4. His front seat is the most comfortable chair he owns.
  5. He is crazy.
In the end we decided that scenarios 1)mean, motion-sick wife or 2)prank wax-man were the most likely of the 5.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey he waves to me. I don't know guess he just likes me more than you but everyone knows I'm the friendly one. By the way Scott if you read this BB needs a night meeting next week so I can have meat balls for dinner one night.

=-)

Anonymous said...

If he waves to Chris, then it's "confirmed". His car is his women free haven. Bonnie has been trying to mess with the zone.
And yes, I'll make sure BB has a night meeting so that Chris can eat meatballs. Nothing says "man time" like a big ball of meat surrounded by pasta.