A Mr. Wilson for the New Millennium

I’ve told you these pages before that My Honey is a musician.  He’s very serious about it, too.

Here he is at some gig or another playing his bass and grinning. 

Well the kids across the street have formed a “band”. 

There are two things I’d like to bring to your attention about that sentence: “the kids across the street have formed a “band”.

1) I am appalled that I have called them kids.  Good lord, when did I get this old?  But they are kids – all of them 16 or 17.  I sincerely hope I’m not “that old lady” that lives across the street.

2) I have also referred to them as a “band”.  This is using the term “band” and that they play “music” in the loosest possible interpretation of those words.  It’s not for a lack of trying that their music is bad, nay terrible.  Those boys are out there every damn night but there has been no improvement.  God help us all – the God of earplugs and sound ordinances.

We were sitting down for dinner tonight and I opened the blind over the dining table because I like to watch the neighborhood while we eat.  The weirdos from my neighborhood are a far sight less disturbing than watching my children eat.  So as I ate the delicious orange chicken that my husband prepared, I begin to see the band members start to arrive.  About the time the garage door opened across the street, I notice that My Honey has a very surly expression on his face.

“What’s with you?” I ask

“I just don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to put up with that,” he replies.

I look at the children.  I assume that it’s some new obnoxious behavior from Sassy and The Bandit to which he is referring.    It was true that neither child was sitting in their chair.  It was also true that they were both singing with half masticated food in their mouths.  I suspect that Sassy wasn’t using a fork either, but I couldn’t understand why all of a sudden this appalling behavior was too much to bear.

“What?” I ask.

He gestures out the window.  “That.  I can’t take it.”  His face is deadly serious.  He means it.

So I shifted my attention back to the growing crowd across the street.  “Do you mean them?”

“YES!”

“Why?  Is it because there is so many of them over there?  They’re not doing anything bad.”  He just glares at me and all of a sudden it dawns on me.  “Oh! It’s because they’re so awful isn’t it?”

“OH MY GOD!  They’re horrible.”  He is startlingly serious.

“Oh come on.  At least they’re not coming over here to ask you for advice.  And really, it wasn’t that long ago when you were in awful teenage band.”

He’s not moving from his implacable opinion.  I myself, the admitted hater of other people, surprisingly don’t have a problem with the band.

What I will have a problem with is the teenage groupies, the girls with too much makeup on and too tight pants, that will inevitably show up.

At that point, I’ll grab the garden hose.