Topic #36: Describe yourself through your neighbor’s eyes.

The first time I saw her, she waved at me over the back fence. “Howdy neighbor!”,  she called out. Howdy?  Is she for real?

Two months later I had a visit from the FBI.  An Agent was doing an investigation. About her. He said it was routine, but some of the questions they asked me were disturbing.

“Have you noticed any suspicious activity next door?”

“Well,” I told them, “She is up at 3:00 am working on a laptop. She drives off around 4:30am. Once in a while she leaves the house when I am just going to bed,  at 1:30am. She keeps pretty weird hours for a computer tech.”

The agent scribbled notes in a little notebook. “Has she said much to you about her job?”

“No. But I hear things when she’s talking on her phone that has the head-set, while she does yard work.”

“What kind of things do you hear?” The agent asked, his notebook open and pencil at the ready.

“Oh, once I heard her say,  ‘Are you sure you want me to kill them?’  – that scared me a little.”

“Anything else?”  Agent FBI didn’t even flinch at my answer. He is either professional, or deaf.

“I have heard her talk about weather problems like cyclones and windstorms, logging into machines, trying out chemical agents and RDD’s”

“Have you observed any unusual behavior?”

“Yeah,  she talks to her roses like they are actually listening to her and answering her. She makes horrible threats to the weeds. She makes jokes about terrorists. Do you think she is dangerous?”

The agent did not acknowledge my question. He was too busy scribbling.

“Are you going to arrest her for something?” I asked.

“Thank you for your cooperation, and your time.”  Mr. Agent shook my hand in that dismissing way they have.

“That’s it?”  I asked. “Are you sure there isn’t information I need to know, since I live next door to a possible terrorist?!”

“Mr. Neighbor,” Agent FBI smiled. ” Unless you are a weed you don’t have anything to worry about.”

Still, I think I will be keeping a closer eye on the lady next door…