Oh, Danny Boy

There are bagpipes being played somewhere in the neighborhood. The nasally tune is being carried by the cool wind that will soon carry with it the first of many good, southern thunderstorms. I'm sitting on my porch with a glass of bourbon and water, smoking my umpteenth cigarette this evening, enjoying the gorgeous, ominous weather.

There was some kind of hullabaloo next door whose illegal festivities I somehow managed to miss altogether just a short hour and a half ago. There were five squad cars idling in front of my house, boxing in my old, crumpled sedan, making me grateful for my earlier decision to order Jimmy John's delivery (for more than one reason, as it was tasty); we are still unsure of the details of what happened, though it apparently was some sort of scuffle, possibly ending with a weaponless rumble with the police themselves, probably involving drug trafficking and potentially all based around a fugitive who was maybe renting the back side of the house next door. Not that any of that matters- I walked my slippered feet down the steps of my porch and found myself chatting with the writer-in-training who lives downstairs; a few minutes later, as I stood quietly on the sidewalk in my padded, backless slippers with a cigarette, I was approached by the lady who lives across the street when she mistook me for the aforementioned writer-in-training. We talked for a good hour, petting cats and swapping stories over several cigarettes, exchanged phone numbers, and I came home.

Why is any of this worth mentioning? It's not especially. Except that I love it here. It's a beautiful neighborhood peopled by friendlies, good citizens who like each other almost as much as their cute pets.

And why is this worth mentioning? Because I'm staying. Not forever, no, but I'm not leaving yet. "Big deal," you say sarcastically. Big deal indeed. I haven't ever stayed in any one place willingly, not in my life. And that is a big deal.

What it comes down to is this: I've got a terrific job that pays well with people I more than tolerate, I live in a charming, little apartment to which I look forward to returning daily, and, well, I'm going to start sending money home to my family. I feel nothing short of old-fashioned in regards to the latter, but the truth is I feel that it would be impractical to throw away perfectly good job experience and resumé fodder while being afforded the opportunity to support the family that has allowed me to get to where I am today, the same family whose sole provider, realistically, will never be able to retire and whose number of intelligent but yet uneducated children are more numerous than the stars in the sky, or at least the fingers on my left hand, which is clutching a cigarette (word usage in post so far: four) as it tries to assist in the typing of this run-on sentence.

So for now, I'm here, and I'm not leaving. I just hope the bagpipes, those harbingers of that nostalgia of things not yet experienced, don't decide to settle down in the otherwise pure and comfortable airwaves of my humble and cozy neighborhood.