Two Men Using the Neighbor Voice
I am walking in a nice mile and a half loop around the neighborhood. It’s 5:48 pm. I need 1,920 steps to 10,000 on my fitbit. It’s a bit tricky. I am in the United States but my Fitbit watch is still set to European time, which means according to my Fitbit it’s 11:48 pm. Which means I have 12 minutes to get almost two thousand steps. If I don’t all manner of bad things will happen in my head.
Additionally, I need to work off my breakfast and lunch. Also my dinner. And the three snacks I had in between those. One of the problems with being in the United States is that it seems that my body wants to gain weight here. Now, I fully admit that my love of cheesesteaks and the ease with which breaded meats find their way to my gullet helps this addition of lard to my exoskeleton. Not to mention that the fact that I make a list of foods to eat here and none of them is on a recommended food pyramid.
This is a bit odd for me, as I typically eat a reasonable and healthy daily diet. But time in the U.S. allows us to break rules in terms of that. The logic being that there are foods we can’t not eat. So while my U.S. diet is somewhat unhealthy, I have kept up my daily exercise and sworn to do my 10,000 steps. This has come after two weeks of taking cars to places.
The neighborhood is middle class, its cars and lawns and houses tell anyone that. It’s well after 5, so lots of people are just home from work and doing just home from work things: watering the lawn, cleaning out the car, bringing out the trash. I am at 9,329 when things start happening.
A good-looking middle-aged man in a white button down and black pants is rolling two trashcans down his driveway when he says: “Hey, how you doing?”
I freeze. A frog in the back of my throat lets out a little croak. But he has already turned around and walked away. I keep moving then step aside onto the grass to let an older couple walking a Dachshund pass by. They say hello and the man asks if it’s hot enough for me.
“Yeah. Big hot. Bad.”
They nod and pass. I move along and glance back at them as I walk, wondering what they are saying about me now. What a weirdo.
My watch says 11:56 and 9,501. I huff along. I can do it. If I had really been able to answer the man’s question, it is far too hot for the likes of me. It’s in the 90s and desperately humid. It’s a sweaty man’s nightmare. But, it dawns on me, I wasn’t really able to answer his question. What was that about.
To take my mind off the heat I think about the differences between being in the U.S and being in Europe. They aren’t huge, but it’s sort of like noticing you can’t do something you never did only when you aren’t able to do it. Walking outside I can’t imagine not being able to pee somewhere in the trees as we can in Prague. In Langhorne, I’d promptly be arrested and since there’s a school about 11 miles away, I’d no doubt be labelled a pervert and forced to register as an RSO for the rest of my life because I had drunk an extra bottle of water. The same goes for taking my shirt off. It’s unbearably hot and if I took off my shirt on the street, a police officer might give me a few glances and tell me to put it back on. We don’t really like nipples here.
But the main thing is that I have forgotten how to talk to neighbors.This in no doubt can be attributed to the fact that in Prague we don’t really chat up our neighbors more than a cursory and embarrassed “Dobry Den.” We typically don’t engage them in small talk about sports, weather, or politics. So I’m rusty.
There’s a “neighbor voice” I used to use. Chipper. Slightly self-deprecating. Nonchalant. A bit louder than usual. And I can’t remember how to use it. I try it a few more times on my walk, but always fall short, leaving the neighbors to cock their heads and eye me with squinty gazes.
The worst part is that I’ll figure out how to use my neighbor voice just in time to get back to Prague, where I won’t need it until Christmas in Langhorne.
Anyway, I look down and the Fitbit reads 12:01 and 6 steps.
“Fuck!”
Oh, I think that rattled it loose.
