One Minute in the Neighborhood

There are 17 houses on my cul-de-sac. It’s a Friday morning, which means it’s quiet. Most everyone is at work I’d imagine…


:59 (House 1) Mandy is late for work due to traffic on Main Street. She was half-listening to a news report about aerial biplane parades in Virginia while texting her co-worker about the traffic. She was planning on peeling out down the next road she found.

:53 (House 2) Brandon is at home working on his car while his four children are at the elementary school: two of them are doodling, one is talking during the PE lesson and his little girl is on the monkey-bars. His wife, Janice, is on the couch watching a Spanish soap opera.

:48 (House 3) Mikaela works at the golf course, but is busy chatting up the cute bartender at the moment. The bartender, Richard, whose shift was nearly over, was deciding whether he wanted to meet his pal Bedford at the mall to “study” for their college English exam or rail Mikaela in the parking lot.

:45 (House 4) Mrs. Hunt is out gardening, picking lemons and oranges from her trees while her son Bedford is going 114 down the Interstate racing a stranger in a Peppermill Company Car next to him while he was on his way to the mall to spend the money he never earned.

:41 (House 5) John is a deputy sheriff, but he has the day off and is out at breakfast with his daughter Trisha, while his wife Melinda is in the bathroom of a coffee shop going down on a man named August that she had been seeing for three months. She plans on running away with him if they’re still at it a month from now.

:37 (House 6) Tommy is up in a plane over the Potomac enjoying the scenery.

:33 (House 7) Nancy is out cleaning her stable while her husband is at work with his partner fixing the electrical wiring at a Party Store, he suspects the wires might be labeled wrong.

:30 (House 8) Maggie is at home wearing her slippers and robe drinking coffee planning out the fun day of wagon rides and sidewalk chalk that lay ahead of her with her two grandchildren.

:26 (House 9) Vasco is sitting in a tree outside the elementary school watching a familiar little girl on the monkey-bars.

:24 (House 10) Ricky is at the firehouse playing cards as a call was coming in about an electrocution at a Party Store, while his fiancé, Rachael, was driving an ambulance to a call 23 blocks away for a car crash on Main and G street. A girl texting and driving, it seemed.

:20 (House 11) Michael is at work at a drugstore, it’s a slow day, in the past hour he had only sold a pack of cigarettes and a pregnancy test to a young couple. His wife, Lucy, is getting a jelly doughnut stain out of her white business shirt before the 11:00 advertisement meeting with Peppermill that could change her life forever.

:16 (House 12) Wendy’s parents are both at counseling for three hours every Friday so she ditched class with her boyfriend, Soot. She was currently in the bathroom crying with pregnancy stick in hand. Soot was raiding a jewelry box he found. Wendy’s mother, Susan, was getting a coffee before the counseling session, wishing the woman in the bathroom wouldn’t take so long, while her father David was telling their psychiatrist that he would be seeing her tomorrow night during Susan’s Pilate class. He wouldn’t miss it for the world.

:14 (House 13) Damian is waiting for his brother to arrive so they could go on a blind double date together. His brother is in a coffee house bathroom with a woman whose name he forgets and that he thinks is a little too fat, but has been getting free head out of it for the last three months, so he doesn’t mind.

:12 (House 14) Hank is twenty feet under the city fixing some leaking pipes with his crew which was causing a huge backup of cars on Main Street. They were all singing The Scorpions “Rock You like a Hurricane” at the top of their lungs. Hank’s wife Mary Ann was at home scrapbooking a picture of Hank and her on their wedding day. Kyle was kicking at her insides, yearning for a tuna sandwich.

:08 (House 15) Rachael (the other Rachael on the street) was ‘Sweating to the 80’s’ in bright pink spandex as if she never got the memo it was a new decade. She was planning on going to Pilate’s with Susan the next night so they could fawn over the weightlifting men on the floor below. Rachael wanted to look her best if she was going to ask out the young man that sold the overpriced water bottles. Meanwhile, that same young man was picking out a tie for a blind lunch date he was about to go on with a man named August who was very busy in a coffeehouse bathroom.

:04 (House 16) Denise and her husband Greg were at the movies wearing 3D glasses, Denise was thinking about her 6:00 English exam and whether or not she should be studying. Greg was waiting for the 3D boobs that his friend told him about yesterday.

:02 (House 17) Well, I guess that’s me. My boyfriend’s at work slaving away creating a 3D movie (sans boobs), my two cats are asleep in their cat tree and my two dogs are barking incessantly at the neighbor picking lemons and oranges outside. Me? Well, I’m not doing much of anything.