Friends With Parents

It all began on a Saturday morning when Michelle, my wife, burst into the living room with the kind of energy usually reserved for a winning lottery ticket.

“Wake up! We’re getting new neighbors! Their moving truck is in the parking lot!”

I gaze up from the couch, where admittedly, I’m half-asleep watching an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants with my 3-year-old daughter, Megan, who had woken me at 6:30 AM--one of the joys of parenthood.

“So?” I reply, unsure why having a new neighbor warrants such excitement.

Michelle gives me a look. “You need to make a good impression,” she says. “First impressions are everything.” Michelle is a high-EQ sort of person.

“Why bother?”

“Don’t you want our children to have friends? If so, we need to be friends with the other parents,”

Little Megan is sucking her thumb and twirling her curls with most of her other free fingers.

“That makes sense,” I concur. Hearing shuffling sounds in the hallway, I spy out the peephole. An attractive blond couple with two small children who look like they just walked out of a Nicole Kidman television series stand in the hallway.

My wife pulls me back from the peephole. “Stop that,” she hisses. “It’s weird.”

The Kiddie Pool

On a sweltering afternoon the next week, little Megan splashes in her kiddie pool in the building’s courtyard. Michele is inside teaching preschool children how to paint. Everything goes swell until Megan freezes, and her face turns red. “Daddy,” she whispers, her voice trembling with urgency, “I pooped!”

She stands up and searches for a floater in the pool. From the swell in her swimsuit, I can see that the evidence hasn’t yet been released to the public yet. I panic and scoop her out of the swimming pool before anyone finds out. She’s now crying, and I rush back toward our apartment. As I clutch Megan against me, and attempt to hurry, the jostling movement causes brown ooze to squeeze out from her little whale swimsuit like ketchup from a packet. The toddler poop slithers down my white t-shirt and seeps into the fabric of my pants.

That’s when I see him—Steve, our new neighbor, standing on his balcony. He stares at me, wide-eyed as I shuffle below, with Megan wailing like a banshee, flailing her little arms.

“Hello!” I shout at our new neighbor. As I make an attempt to wave, Megan almost falls out of my arms. My neighbor nods back doubtfully.

When I make it inside, the four first-graders at my wife’s art class turn around and look at us. There’s a high-pitched chorus of “Ewwww!” when they see the poop. Their little fingers clench their noses.

Michelle looks at me with an expression of pure horror. “Did you just run past our new neighbors carrying that naked, screaming child?”

“She pooped, in the pool!” It’s really not a big deal; kids have accidents.

Michele closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

After cleaning up, out the window, I watch our neighbors getting into their BMW wearing startlingly clean clothes.

My Excuse—Science

According to sociologists, people in their 30s tend to be in the most judgmental period of their life, driven by an urge to secure resources, stability, and status for their offspring. A need to protect against perceived threats pushes individuals to judge others harshly, especially parents striving to climb the ladder to safeguard their family’s future.

In the Middle Ages, it made perfect sense. In today’s world of stability and abundance, it makes no sense at all. At least not to me.

Misdemeanor on the Staircase

The day after the pool incident, my wife decides we should have some normal interactions with Steve and Liz, our new neighbors, to break the ice. She’s gained intel about them from her network. “When you see them, say hi. And be normal.” she emphasizes each word like she’s talking to a child. “And, above all, don’t say anything weird. Can you do that?”

I nod, determined to redeem myself. I’m American, and Steve is British, but there is a bro-code—one that transcends all ethnic and national boundaries. On the way back from taking out the trash, I run into Steve. We say hello, and we have a perfectly pleasant conversation about the weather, taking care of young children, and living in a foreign country. I even manage to crack a joke about what happened at the swimming pool. Steve laughs and says something witty about how awful it is to change diapers. Suddenly, I feel like we are now friends. I return home feeling like a champion.

“I talked to Steve!”

“How did it go?” she asks, with a hopeful smile.

“Great!” I say, beaming. “He’s a good guy.” I am a half-glass-full type of person.

Michelle studies me from head to toe. Her smile falters. “Did you know you’re wearing different shoes?”

My eyes dart to my feet. As I study my shoes, sure enough, there are slight differences—different logos, and the shoelaces are different shades of gray.

“No one would notice!” I protest.

“I noticed,” she says. “Normal people would notice.”

“Oh,” I say, my voice squeaking. “Uh… I was in a hurry?”

Michele buries her face in her hands.

A Taxi Downtown

“Just… don’t talk to the neighbors unless I’m there,” she says, her tone suggesting I am one mishap away from being sent to a mental institution.

Fate has other plans. The next morning, I run into Steve on the way out of the building, and we share a taxi downtown.

Steve is a lawyer. Better yet, he explains he’s what they call in the UK a barrister—a higher level type of lawyer they have there. He’s extremely chill about it. I find that the more elite British are, the humbler they speak of themselves. The rich do “bits and bobs” of always unnamed things, while bartenders tell you endlessly about their business plans, partnership investments, and special connections.

Steve asks the ever awkward question: “So, what do you do for work?”

I work in computerized stock market trading, but find it far too technical to explain to anyone, and haven’t really come up with what others call a pitch. “I work for myself,” I say to keep it simple.

“A freelancer?”

It feels like an insulting title to be given by a barrister. “I’m not a freelancer. I set up a business.” I wink at him to let him know that I am indeed doing well.

Steve blinks. “Oh. Interesting. And what does your business sell?”

“We don’t sell anything! Just, basically, move assets around, you know?”

Steve looks at me as if he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. I see a new caution in his eyes. “You don’t need to explain,” he says, and changes the topic back to childcare.

He moves slightly farther away from me in the taxi, but I feel the conversation goes great.

The Aftermath

When I return home that night, over dinner after the children have finished eating, Michelle gazes at me from across the table. “I saw you talk to Steve this morning?”

Which reminds me, I have good news. “Yes! And guess what? We shared a taxi downtown!”

“How did it go? What did you talk about?” she asks in a friendly way. I recall she always does this right when I’m about to be questioned by an attorney for the prosecution.

I pause and try to sound casual. “The usual guy stuff.”

“What exactly did you say?”

“He told me he was a lawyer, a barrister,’ and asked about my job.”

“Then what did you say?”

“I told him I work for myself.” I go through exactly what I told Steve.

Michelle laughs. “From what you told him, do you know you made it sound exactly like you’re a money launderer?”

Now that she says it that way, I was quite circumspect. “Oops,” I gulp.

“Next time, just say you work in IT.”

Epilogue

Somehow, despite my best efforts to sabotage everything, Steve and his wife bond with Michele and treat us, if not friends, as allies of convenience—emergency babysitters, a neighbor to borrow sugar from, that sort of thing.

When they move out two years later, always polite Steve see me and smiles, “It was nice having you as neighbors!” He reaches out and shakes my hand.

I feel overjoyed its worked out so well, and later, let Michelle know.

“Did he give you his contact info?”

I shake my head. Defeated again.

Luckily, by this time, we have become great friends with George and Jennifer. George is a music teacher, and says while everyone else uses their energy trying to fit in, artists actually work to be weird and stick out.

We are still friends. Every time we visit, George gives me a man hug, and Jennifer brews a pot of tea.

My kind of people.