Tuesday's with Mary

I've never read Mitch Albom's best-selling book Tuesday's with Morry. Is that even how you spell Morry, or is it Maury like Maury Povich? And is that how you spell Maury Povich? Don't know.

But I do know that my encounters with my landlord, Mary, are always eventful and amusing in their own little ways. So, I though, why not create a blog-series, a la Music Dude and A Couple Things, to bring them to the visitors. So here it is, the first installment.

Many of your are already pretty familiar with Mary. She's accomodating, caring, intrusive and old.

Today, she brought Don Murphy by my crib to fix my food degrader and the microwave oven.

Don is about 52, tanned and from Boston. Between the two of them, they were more entertaining than the paper I was reading. Some excerts from their 30-minute visit.

-- CNN was on the telly, coverage toggling between Rita and Roberts. So Don comes in and sees the weather map on the tube and we have this conversation:

"Why can't that stupid storm just go to Mexico. Leave us alone."
"Yeah, but then those people would be homeless and, god-forbid, dead."
"Yeah, but at least if it went to Mexico our gas prices wouldn't go up."

If you cant tell, Don's a humanitarian.

-- I'm the only black person in my whole community. That's not an exageration. I'm dead-up serious. I've been here two months, haven't seen a black person yet and my jogging route takes me throughout most of the community. So you figure I'm the only black dude ina community of about 1,500-2,000 people.

I say all that to reinforce the fact that all eyes are on me. At all times. My comings and goings and visitors are known by all in my immediate vicinity abd when I drive through other streets, it's probably, "Oh, there goes that new black reporter that just moved here a couple months ago." And my neighbors report back to Mary too, because some of neighbors are the old-nosey types. The kind that sit in front of their window all day, unless the Price is Right is on (when that's on, they turn off the lights and fantasize about Bob Barker, may get into a lil self-love).

So when Mary came by today she had a question to ask me. She got my attention by tapping on the paper I was reading.

Honey, is your mother a slight woman?
No. Mom's not slight.
Oh, OK. Well you must've had some lady-friends over here recently, huh? Yeah, you know the neighbors watch you and they said you had slim lady over here a couple times. She drives a white car right? Ha, ha. Ahhhhh, honey, that's nice that you've found a friend.
Actually, Mary, I haven't had any women over here since I moved in. Maybe someone came by and knocked on the door when I was gone.
No. They're talking about that girl that's been coming by lately. What's her name, Dear?
...Yeah. I don't know, since I haven't met her.
OK Dear...hey Don, I'm gonna run around the corner to Hazel's house. I'll be back in a jiff.

This story amused me, because 1) it substantiated what I always knew: I have nosey neighbors that watch me and then gossip to the whole community; and 2) these old geezers are blind as 23 bats.

All the time Mary was info-fishing, I knew what she was talking about, but didn't clarify things just because I refuse to facilitate her intrusions. But trust that I had the widest smile during this conversation.

My blind, busy-body neighbors weren't looking at a slight woman in a white car; they were looking at a slight man in a beige car. My co-sports reporter, Dave Murphy, is about 6'1, 170 lb. He stayed at my crib a couple days when he first started because he couldnt move into his apartment until Saturday and he wanted to get started at the gig ASAP.

So the old powder-puss geezers across the street saw an image and started gossiping. And since they only see shapes and the only colors they recognize are black and white; they figured it was a slender girl in a white car.

They probably refer to me as "Mary's buxom tenant with the black car."