The house across the street sold recently (new construction) and the new neighbors have been moving in slowly over the past couple weeks. We had caught glimpses of them, but not met them yet. Until Friday.
I was off, so we took the little ones to the zoo for a bit, and as we were unloading the FUDVee (Family Urban Deployment Vehicle aka minivan) about return, the female neighbor came plodding down her driveway out towards her van in the street. I looked up, she made eye contact, and I thought “oh, we’ll get to introduce ourselves…” then she spoke.
“Should we be worried about the ‘lock and load’ on the truck?” is the first thing she blurts out (referring to my LOKNLOD vanity plate – I know, I know, PERSEC fail on my part, double fail for admitting it online).
My wife just kind of laughs nervously, because she’s a little flabberghasted that that is her choice for an icebreaker.
She then confirms her intentions by continuing with something along the lines of, “I saw that and thought ‘they must have a lot of weapons’ and I was telling my husband that’s scary.” That’s paraphrased, because I’m not fluent in coward, but I distinctly remember “weapons” and “scary” as well as being a little surprised with the word “husband”, based on her appearance.
I managed to reel my jaw up off the driveway and blurt out “oh, we’re harmless…” in an attempt to maintain a neutral position, and to keep from saying anything along the lines of “I noticed you’re obese, we don’t have to worry about any trans-fats leaking over, do we?”
Then she got in her van and drove off. No intro, or “hi” or “we’re the Fatty McDykertons, we just moved in from Chicago”. Nothing. Just zinged a snide remark at us, and drove off.
Yay. Looks like we’ve got antis for neighbors.
