Idiots

They would have to be idiots.

A home owner at our monthly GACCA meeting held tonight in response to the idea that someone would buy a new house on the street we live. You know the one we are staying on, waiting till the tenants in the back move out so we have a price that house in this neighborhood.

After the meeting tonight, I would agree. Rather a hopeless meeting, residents angry at decisions made for them about how best to go about revitalizing their neighborhood feeling used to get funds only to have control of the funds completely removed from their input and control. If I had been at this for fifteen years, I would be incensed too.

We've only lived here for a few months and I find myself put out. I find myself overwhelmed and hopeless. I wonder if we will still be in a semi-smoky room in the American Legion in fifteen years still upset at the city for funneling money to other neighborhoods. I wonder if in fifteen years, I will be worried for Abigail to walk to the library alone for the johns soliciting her. I wonder if I could make it fifteen years in this type of work.

I kept hearing the man shouting from the back, a man living in a rougher part of the neighborhood than mine, a man living beside a condemned house yet to be boarded up, owned by the city with weeds seven feet high. They would be idiots. I wonder if he was speaking for God or for the enemy.

I talk with my neighbor, Mrs. F. whose husband isn't long for this world. And with Mrs. Z. whose husband passed many years ago left alone surrounded by the rental property of a slumlord. And I joke with our landlord that after this meeting why would we want to buy his house. My landlady offers me a ride home and tells me to be careful walking the Avenue (I may be mistaken for a prostitute).

I recount the walk down. A little old man nodded to me, hello. I nodded back and smiled. (Isn't that what you are supposed to do?) I could feel him turn around to check me out. YUCK! I told her that I decided to think of myself as extra-cute if someone is taking a second look and let it make my day instead of completely gross. me. out. We laugh. She drives and I walk.

As I walk the man's words shout in my head, They would be idiots! And I ask the Lord why. With all this, why should we stay when there are perfectly cute houses out there with wonderful large lots we could buy. And God whispers,

The people. I love them.

Banging my head off the desk trying not to think of myself as an idiot when in the eyes of my flesh that is all I can hear, I determine that those were the words of the enemy.