Mr. Ed

When I was growing up, we lived on a street that had four-foot, chain-link fences around the yards.  It was easy to climb over them to get to the yard next door, which CC and I did all the time.  He lived next door to me, and we were like brothers, so there wasn’t a day that went by that we didn’t play together.  Our favorite game was to spy on the neighbors, and our favorite neighbor to spy on was Mr. Ed.

Mr. Ed was a bachelor that lived two houses down from me.  He was an awesome man that took time to talk to us like we were important, shared his Girl Scout cookies with us (he liked the lemon ones), and endured our incessant “kidness” with boundless patience.  But he also intrigued us, because he lived alone.  We couldn’t figure out why a great guy like that would be alone.  Oh we had some theories, like he was gay, but he never had anyone over to confirm or deny.  He was in his thirties and not bad looking, so why didn’t he have a family?  It made no sense to our naïve childlike minds.  We need more data.  So, we did the only decent thing to do in that situation…we spied on him.

One night, after it was dark, we crept into his yard behind the bushes and looked into his windows.  He was bustling around the house, doing normal things like eating dinner, washing dishes, or reading a book.  Nothing covert or newsworthy.  This went on for quite a while, when all of a sudden all of the lights in the house went off.  It was only around seven or eight o’clock, so we were stunned that he would be going to bed so early.  We strained our eyes to see into the dark, to make out shapes, movement, anything.  But there was nothing. 

We had just decided to abandon our post and head home when someone grabbed us from behind.  We let out two high-pitched shrieks and tried to flee, but our assailant held on firmly to our shirts.  I chanced a look back and stared directly into the grinning face of Mr. Ed.  He apparently had caught a glimpse of us staring into the windows and decided to reverse the tables on us.  So, he had gone along as if he didn’t suspect anything, then suddenly turned out the lights and climbed out his bedroom window.  We had been so absorbed with things inside the house, that we weren’t paying attention to dark figure stealthily creeping up on us outside the house.  He wasn’t mad or anything.  In fact, he seemed downright proud of himself that he had out “spied” us.  That’s just how Mr. Ed was.

Not long after, we found out that he was actually an engineer that worked at a petroleum company in Houston.  He was not gay, just taking his time, and he eventually got married and moved away.  That was a very sad day for us…and for him, I like to think.  The neighbors that bought his house were not nearly as awesome as Mr. Ed.  We lost touch with him after he moved, and I can only hope now that he found all of the happiness that he deserved from life.  I hope he had many kids that he could play with and share Girl Scout cookies with.  I suspect that he would make a great father.