Why doesn't anybody here like me?

[MDC 7,301]

I'm not such a bad guy

[Mephisto 15]

Because of sh*t like this...

 

The first sign of trouble is the screen door at the side of the house. It’s opened wide and swings on its hinges in time with the breeze, as if Mr. Jeffrey took a walk to the store for cigarettes or Lotto tickets and forgot to latch it.

 

From across the street, you can see that his lawn chair is still upright in the yard but the coffee can he uses as an ashtray is on its side in the crabgrass. Mr. Jeffrey’s vegetable garden – once a source of pride – has been reduced to a weedy rectangle. It’s overrun by dandelions and badly gnawed by animals, probably the squirrels that skitter up trees throughout your neighborhood.

 

Of course, the lawn is still uncut. It ran ankle-deep, even back in the early Spring before the flowerbeds on your own windowsill began to bloom. Mom once looked out the kitchen window to Mr. Jeffrey’s house and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “If he can’t manage the yard anymore,” she said to your father, “they really ought to hire someone to cut it for him.”

 

Walking across your front lawn to Mr. Jeffrey’s house you wonder: Who are they? There’ve been visitors – the thick-hipped Filipina you took to be a nurse, the young couple who may have been grandchildren – but not for many months now, maybe a year. Come to think of it, you haven’t seen Mr. Jeffrey in some time.

[NewbieJr 541]

I'm not such a bad guy

Link?

[MDC 7,301]

Because of sh*t like this...

 

Never seen this before in my life.

[MDC 7,301]

Because you are a liar.

 

Am not.

[jerryskids 6,737]

You go out of your way to try to be not liked. Usually, as a contrarian, it would make me like you more. But what can I say, you are damn good at it.

[Bill E. 703]

Am not.

 

Are too.

|

|

V

 

 

I'm not such a bad guy

[MDC 7,301]

Are too.

|

|

V

 

Are not.

 

times infinity no takebacks

[kutulu 1,672]

I don't dislike you. I don't like you either. For whatever reason, I don't even notice you. Are you a new poster?

[Mephisto 15]

And your proficiency in offering heaping piles of dung, like this...

Mr. Jeffrey was once a well-respected teacher of Social Studies at the local high school, but for as long as you’ve known him he’s been an old man. Long-jowls. Salt-and-pepper hair. Glasses that magnify his eyes until they seem bulbous, like an insect. The kind of old man who wears his pants up past his navel and buttons shirts to his neck, even in the sultry calm of a Long Island summer. Mr. Jeffrey wears a wedding band, but there’s never been a Mrs. Jeffrey in your lifetime.

 

You used to see him outside on Sundays, walking back from church with your parents. Gardening in the Spring, raking foliage in the Fall. On warmer days, he might sit in his lawn chair to smoke cigarettes and listen to the Mets broadcast on a transistor radio.

 

Mr. Jeffrey would smile and wave. There’d be some amicable conversation with Dad that you barely understood and didn’t care to. Mr. Jeffrey was a trusted neighbor; that’s the part that mattered.

 

“Going to help me out with these snails, little man?” he would ask.

 

Mr. Jeffrey’s garden was littered with them – snaking up tomato stalks or gliding through the soil like tiny sailboats. You remember their spiral shells, the way their antennae would retract from the salt of your fingertips. It was your job to collect them in a sand pail that Mr. Jeffrey kept in the garage.

 

“What’re you gonna do with them?” you asked him once.

 

“Eat ‘em,” he said, rubbing his stomach in mock hunger. “Escargots!”

 

You weren’t sure what that meant, but you laughed anyway. You liked Mr. Jeffrey, back then. And he always seemed happy to see you – quick with another glass of lemonade or a slice of cake from the kitchen. Content to listen to baseball or read in his lawn chair while you collected snails from the garden.

 

You recall these times with a pang of embarrassment. What must Mr. Jeffrey have thought of you? Visiting an old man, as if the two of you were friends. What a nuisance you must have been! There are comic books and baseball cards and girls to worry about now … how foolish, to have spent your days visiting some old man on your block.

[Bill E. 703]

Are not.

 

times infinity no takebacks

 

 

I just quoted a lie you told.

[jets24 6]

Because Toro told me to hate you.

[TheNewGirl 1,474]

I love my dead ghey MDC.

[MDC 7,301]

And your proficiency in offering heaping piles of dung, like this...

 

Still drawing a blank.

[surferskin 30]

1. you're an eagles fan

2. you're a huge lib

3. you cry often

4. you're poor

5. you're a welcher

 

i could go on...

[jets24 6]

This thread can be answered in one single word....

 

 

 

 

MAYBELLINE

[MDC 7,301]

1. you're an eagles fan

2. you're a huge lib

3. you cry often

4. you're poor

5. you're a welcher

 

i could go on...

 

1. True

2. False

3. False

4. False

5. True

[jets24 6]

1. True

2. False

3. False

4. False

5. True

 

 

Maybe people don't like you cause you admit to being a welcher?

[Mephisto 15]

Maybe this load of garbage will refresh your memory:

 

It’s August on Long Island, New York, and you are eleven years old.

 

Since school let out, it’s been a blaze of riding bikes and swimming at the public pool and playing stickball at the batter’s box you drew in chalk on the rear wall of Alva T. Stanforth Middle School. There’ve been day trips to Jones Beach with your parents, a weeklong vacation at Lake George, a visit to Uncle Arthur at his farmhouse upstate. Each day bleeding into the next until the entire summer feels like one unbroken day that’s never going to end.

 

A card lay on top a stack of bills and supermarket circulars on the kitchen table when you walked in this afternoon. Mom faced the stove, flattening hamburgers with spatula so they crackled in the skillet. You’d been playing stickball with the guys, and you would have stayed longer – it was still light outside – but this is your agreement with Mom: It’s not necessary to check in during the day, but you will eat dinner “as a family” every night.

 

One week from today is your twelfth birthday. You picked the card off the table, thinking it might be a present, but it’s not. The envelope was red and sealed from behind with a snowman sticker. Addressed to Mr. Jeffrey, and accidentally delivered to your house. Why would someone mail Mr. Jeffrey a Christmas card in August?

 

“Andy, would you walk that over to Mr. Jeffrey’s house?” Mom asked.

 

“Alright Mom.”

 

You reached the door before Mom called back over her shoulder.

 

“Just drop it in the mailbox and hurry back. Dad will be home any minute.”

 

She delivered the real message with her eyes – Don’t talk to Mr. Jeffrey. Don’t go in his house. He hasn’t been himself.

 

Your parents were the first to notice. Small changes at first. The wrinkled workshirts. The patchy whiskers that looked more like an accident than a beard. Then there was the time you saw Mr. Jeffrey standing in his yard, wearing a flannel and gymnastic shorts on a blustery Fall day. You remember that his legs were thin and the color of raw chicken. Dad called out to Mr. Jeffrey and waved. His only reply was a sneer. Even then you wondered, What is Mr. Jeffrey angry about? Mr. Jeffrey isn’t a trusted neighbor anymore. He’s a ghost, withering in the garden across the street.

[TheNewGirl 1,474]

Did MDC write a book or something?

 

[GettnHuge 2]

I'm not such a bad guy

 

I like you just the way you are. :hugs:

[jerryskids 6,737]

1. True

2. False

3. False

4. False

5. True

 

How's that hunt for a full sized bed coming?

[TD Ryan2 316]

or something?

 

[jerryskids 6,737]

Did MDC write a book or something?

 

Do you live in an internet cave or something?

[MDC 7,301]

Did MDC write a book or something?

 

 

I had a really craptacular short story published on an ezine years ago.

 

Apparently Mephisto dug it.

[edjr 6,580]

One word.

 

Welcher.

 

How's that hunt for a full sized bed coming?

 

[MDC 7,301]

 

You don't even have a dishwasher!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

neither do i

[surferskin 30]

You don't even have a dishwasher!

neither do i

or a car...but you're not poor?

[GobbleDog 992]

"Monkey Death Car"

[jerryskids 6,737]

Have we established yet that MDC is, by most objective measures, poor?

[MDC 7,301]

or a car...but you're not poor?

 

No, because I don't particularly want either?

 

Between parking and insurance a car would run me $500/month EASY in this city. Why would I do that when I work a mile away from where I live?

 

I will have a dishwasher when I move in two weeks.

 

Movin' on up! To the east side! To a delux apartment, in the sky!

 

 

Have we established yet that MDC is, by most objective measures, poor?

 

I probably am in the lowest 5 percentile of what FFTers claim to earn.

 

and the lowest 1 percentile in cack size, sexual conquests and kung fu ability, too

[edjr 6,580]

You don't even have a dishwasher!

neither do i

 

because I choose not to. but yes, I am poor too. welcome to the club.

[jerryskids 6,737]

 

I probably am in the lowest 5 percentile of what FFTers claim to earn.

 

and the lowest 1 percentile in cack size, sexual conquests and kung fu ability, too

I thought you were a krav maga badass or something.

 

The rest, I believe.

[MDC 7,301]

because I choose not to. but yes, I am poor too. welcome to the club.

 

[kpbuckeye 3]

welchers = tattle-tales

[MDC 7,301]

welchers = tattle-tales

 

I have never reported a thread before.

[Mephisto 15]

I have never reported a thread before.

 

Yeah, well this sh*t should have been reported...

 

The uncut grass claws at your new sneakers as you make your way to Mr. Jeffrey’s side door. The sneakers were an early birthday present, and Mom will be furious if you ruin them already. She argued that you should wait until next week to open gifts, and only relented when Dad said you needed a new pair of shoes anyway.

 

Drop it in the mailbox and head right back, Mom said, and you would do just that if it weren’t for the door – rocking on its hinges as you approach. And the ashtray, and the lawn chair, and the state of his yard … a dawning apprehension as you step into the side door of Mr. Jeffrey’s house and latch the screen behind you.

 

“Mr. Jeffrey?” Your voice cracks badly. It’s been doing that more and more these days, to your repeated embarrassment. Your voice echoes across the linoleum tile and dies in the hall. On cue, a swarm of fruit flies take flight from the stacks of unwashed dishes – plates crusted with chicken bones, glasses half empty of flat soda, a saucepan full of some milky substance – that fill the sink and cover the kitchen table. The flies circle like silent vultures. You lay Mr. Jeffrey’s Christmas card next to an ashtray on the table and head down the hallway.

 

It occurs to you that Mr. Jeffrey might be angry to find you in his home. Maybe he’s taking a nap. Maybe he’s on the toilet. Maybe he did take a walk to Teamo. He could walk in at any moment, wondering why you are standing in his living room now and calling up the staircase. The Mr. Jeffrey that you knew wouldn’t mind. Wasn’t that the kitchen table where he served you a slice of cake or a glass of lemonade after an afternoon of snail-collecting? Didn’t he invite you in, as a friend, on many occasions? These days, you’re not so sure.

 

The living room is hot and dark. There is no air conditioner or oscillating fan in here. Dust motes hover through velvet drapes. Clothing covers the furniture. White undershirts. Workpants. Yellowing socks. More dishes – a frying pan on the coffee table, a plate of dried gravy on the television, an overturned wineglass, badly staining the carpet. The smell is awful: Dirty laundry and urine and sickness, pungent in the heat of Mr. Jeffrey’s living room.

 

There’s a noise, from second floor. Guttural, like a phlegmy cough or a clearing throat. You stand silent at the foot of the stairs and listen. It’s possible that Mr. Jeffrey left a second-floor window open. It could have been a bird, or a child, playing in the street. Maybe even the yawning wind. You’ve almost convinced yourself to leave … and there’s that noise again. Louder this time, more persistent.

 

There’s something horrible up there. You just know it, the way a clairvoyant might know something through a vision. A few years ago you might have imagined the bloodshot eye of a killer, lying in wait for your ascent. But you’re too old to believe in the boogeyman now. You imagine Mr. Jeffrey, dying on the toilet like Elvis on his throne.

[MDC 7,301]

Yeah, well this sh*t should have been reported...

 

[kpbuckeye 3]

I have never reported a thread before.

 

i'll give you that, you are a man about the sissy slap fights and I salute you.

[GettnHuge 2]

Is that really fotty reasons?