STALKER

I have a neighbor named Max. He is four. He came over this weekend to help me do yard work. I was using my weed wacker and listening to a podcast, so I didn't hear him arrive, but I looked up at one point and there he was, squatting patiently on the sidewalk with his fingers in his ears. As soon as I acknowledged him, we became best friends and he talked almost nonstop for a good 2o minutes (he had to take a little break to run next door and come back wearing safety goggles and lugging his trimmer for me to look at--he says he'll come back next week and show me how it works). Almost immediately (after telling me that he also had a trimmer and that it was bigger than mine and faster and better) he asked me if I lived in my house and then, "Where's your husband?" It's like there's something in the water around here. Max also told me that his mom kicked his dad out of the house (not surprising--they spent a not insignificant portion of the winter having arguments in their driveway), that the bug he saw in my grass was full of poison and would kill me if it bit me (I took this under advisement, although it looked like a Box Elder beetle to me), and he invited me over for dinner to have some smoked chicken (I politely declined).

And then he spent the rest of the weekend knocking on my door. If I didn't answer his front door knocking, he let himself into the backyard and knocked on the back door for a while. At night, in the morning (while I was still in bed), in the afternoon. Max was at the door all weekend. I'm being stalked by a 4-yr-old.

I imagine I'll be seeing a lot of Max this summer, because he LOVES the trimmer, and I've decided that all my lawn care will now be done with the weed wacker. No lawn mower, no spades, no pulling weeds by hand. All plants will be uniformly cut down with my trimmer. Some tulips perished in this weekend's work, but it's a small price to pay for the new program.