Rumors and other junk

I'm sitting here wondering how people can have so much time on their hands that they have nothing better to do than to interfere in the lives of others. See, I live in HUD subsidized housing, for the time being. I've just finished my Bachelors Degree, and I'm in the process of trying to get work so I can save money and move. I've lived here just over two years, while I was attending school, and have come to know many of my neighbors, most of who don't work, or do anything else, for that matter. While I wouldn't really call them friends, I do know a lot about them just from the short talks we have while we're sitting outside when our children are playing together; what I hear from them, stays with me; I never pass on any information that is private. Recently, though, something has changed in the cul-de-sac. People who were friendly just two weeks ago have suddenly started shunning me, talking behind my back, and turning my children away from their doors.

There’s one neighbor I talk with who is pretty nice, but who suffers from mental illness, so her moods flip-flop constantly. She’s got two children and her estranged husband living with her. They’ve both told me, at different times, that they no longer have a marriage but that it’s economically feasible for him to be there to help with the bills, and convenient for him to help with the kids when symptoms of her illness take over and she’s incapable of doing so. That’s all well and good; but none of my business. Still, we all talk-she and I, he and I-whatever.

A couple of weeks ago he came into my home to fix an appliance and a few days later the wife tells me that there is a rumor going around that I’m having an affair with her husband. She said it was stupid, but that she didn’t even care because they aren’t together any more. I had to laugh because anyone in the area that knows me knows that I’m sitting at my computer most nights, alone-and my computer is on the wall directly opposite my living room door. Anyone who looks can see what I’m doing. Besides, regardless of the fact that they’re separated, as they say, they’re still married and I’m just not interested in getting in the middle of that. In retrospect, just from other things she’s said to me about herself and her “marriage,” I realized that she got the “affair” idea all on her own because of her illness. So be it.

Last week, however, she had a bad episode and had to be hospitalized for about a week. While she was away, I was helping her husband take care of the kids. I took them to school, since they go with my kids; I picked them up from school when I picked up my own kids; I child-sat them while their dad was at work; and I fed them dinner because he got home past a regular dinner time. He’d get home and take the kids home to get them ready for bed and school the next day. On the weekend, they were with me all day so he could work his second job.

In the evenings, after all the kids-mine and his-were in bed, he and I would talk-either me at his place, him at mine, or out on the front stoop. Our front doors were wide open so we could watch for our respective kids if they got out of bed, or needed us for any reason. We’d talk and watch TV. What we didn’t realize, for a day or so, was that his wife had called another neighbor to keep an eye on us. They would talk on the phone daily and the wife would ask questions of the neighbor, who, in turn, would give her report, however the information she gave was completely untrue. Not only would the spying neighbor watch us from her windows, but she went into other neighbors’ homes and watched us-I guess to get different visual angles-thus spreading the lies and rumors further through the cul-de-sac. She had to explain why she wanted in their homes.

The wife came home a few days ago and things have gone completely downhill since then, although they had started to go badly a few days before. Because the spying neighbor twisted the truth in her own mind, and because she believed whatever she’d heard from a mentally ill friend, she began to form her own opinions of me, and won’t even let my three-year-old daughter into her home to play with her own little girl. She’s always got an excuse for keeping my daughter from playing, and sends her home where my daughter cries to me because she isn’t allowed to play. This was almost every day when the wife was away, and still continues. Not only does the spying neighbor not have the common sense to realize that the information she’s receiving from her friend is all imaginary, but she’s feeding these delusions with her own made up information, making the mentally ill neighbor that much more unstable.

Now, most everyone in the cul-de-sac has stopped talking to me and him, and all because nobody has bothered to ask either one of us the truth. Geez, if talking is a crime I should have been arrested years ago. What I find really funny is that I’ve always gotten along with men better than with women simply because of things like this. If I tell a man something personal, he keeps it to himself; if I tell a woman, there’s a good chance it’ll be spread to everyone who wants to listen. That’s why my friends are few and select, and I trust them implicitly. This spying neighbor, not a month ago, was telling my daughter that she was my friend. I’m sorry, but friends don’t do things like this to each other; and they certainly don’t bring their children into the middle of it the way she’s doing with my daughter.

I feel bad for her because she needs so much excitement in her life that she’s willing to lower herself to the point that she has. I can handle whatever she wants to toss my way, but my daughter is too young to understand. Not to mention the fact that Zach, my six year old, was asking me yesterday why this woman was telling lies about me. I had to explain to him that it was adult business and that he doesn’t need to worry about it. Now that’s really sad. I’m trying to raise my kids to be honest and respectful of others, and then they see a trusted adult doing exactly what I’m teaching them not to do.

I really wish my neighbors had more ambition in life than to sit around gossiping and spreading rumors. Let’s just hope they grow up before their own children realize what they’re doing and turn out just like them.