Hello, I'm a coward

Once again Mama Kat has an assignment. Why didn't I do this weeks before now? I never knew I could be such a good pupil. (She is still having the Hoover Vacuum give away!)

Once upon a time I lived across the street from a REALLY obnoxious neighbor. She was almost insane, her husband was scary AND her kids were demons. I was scared of this family.

The mother would fight with one of the other neighbors. They would stand in the street and scream at each other. They always used such lovely words. Most of them started with an "F". The children of the neighborhood had such a nice education that summer.

The father would start a fist fight with anyone who looked at him wrong. You would always see him charging out of his front door to slam someone in the face with his fist. But he was never around when the mother was out screaming obscenities at other folks.

The oldest son stole Cole's first BMX bike. We had spent months saving for it and he took it from the front porch while we were eating dinner. Cole's friend saw him. We asked him about it. He told us to take a hike, only he used very colorful language. So the police came. Nothing was found. A year or so after that he started selling drugs. Right in front of his house. If someone called the police the mother would run out of the house and start screaming all those nice words at them too.

There were three more boys. Their antics are so numerous I dare not list them all here.

Needless to say, my children had strict instructions to stay away from the whole crazy family.

One day a new neighbor moved in. She asked me about the neighbors. I tend to talk too much and told her about all the lovely neighbors all around us and rolled my eyes and shook my head when she asked about the family from Hades.

She told the crazy mom what I had done.

She showed up at church the very next Sunday. She had never been before. Yikes!

So I did what any yellow bellied chicken would do. I hid in the nursery. She wouldn't murder me with 2 year olds around would she?

She wrote me a letter and called me a hypocrite. I deserved it. I should have kept my twitches to myself. I still have that letter and stumble across it now and than. I still shake when I remember. So, I wrote her a letter of apology. Now I was trying to be a good neighbor. I was trying to make things better.

Then, she came to my house. I saw her walking across the street and I shrieked, I started to shake, I RAN to my bedroom and crawled under my bed. Soon, everyone was looking for me. I saw their feet marching around the bed , into the bathroom and back again. Calling my name. Wondering where in the world I could I gone. I laid there hardly breathing for fear someone would hear the slightest move. I have never been so scared in my whole life. I was sure she had come to scream at me and have her husband beat me to a pulp. I stayed there until she had been gone for 15 minutes. And then every time I went out of the house for weeks I would double check my surroundings to make sure she was no where in sight.

I finally did talk to her but it was long after she had calmed down. We never were friendly, in fact she continued to wreck havoc in our neighborhood but at least I wasn't high on her list. The new neighbor later told me how sorry she was that she had passed on my wrinkled brow and shuddering body. She didn't know she what she was living next door to do.

I am proud to be that yellow bellied chicken.