Back in June of 2010 we had some new neighbors move into the house behind mine. Our driveways are shared by a back alley. I\u2019m not Andy Griffith or Mr. Rogers \u2013 meaning I didn\u2019t go introduce myself or welcome the family to town.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong, I\u2019m not a mean old bastard, cranky, or a dick. I just don\u2019t socialize very much. I go home to be in my fortress of solitude. Anyway, I was out back taking out trash and met our neighbors who were outside in their driveway.\u00a0 I\u2019m not an expert type of cultures outside of Texas but if I had to guess I\u2019d say my new neighbors were Swahili.<\/p>\n
There is a husband, wife, and 3 young boys (maybe 6-12 years of age), and two girls between (10-15 years of age).\u00a0 Now that I seen them outside it was only polite for introductions. The conversation went like this:<\/p>\n
Me \u2013 \u201cHi.\u201d<\/p>\n
Swahili Dad \u2013\u201cHi\u201d \u2013 and he said it with a huge smile on his face.<\/p>\n
Me \u2013 \u201cYour our new neighbors. My name is Leo. What\u2019s yours?\u201d<\/p>\n
Swahili Dad \u2013 \u201cHi\u201d \u2013 and he said it with a huge smile on his face \u2013 again.<\/p>\n
At that point I kind of knew they didn\u2019t know much English. The Swahili Wife came over and said hi. And talked to me a little bit. However, I didn\u2019t understand a bit of her English. I nodded my head, laughed, and went in side.<\/p>\n
For the next month or two their kids would play in the alley way. They didn\u2019t have any toys but did a ball, puddle of water, and hula hoop. I kind of felt sorry for them because that\u2019s all they played with. Then my mind wondered into the realm that maybe they were poor and couldn\u2019t afford anything. When you don\u2019t have a line of communication you start to think all kinds of weird stuff.<\/p>\n
Then at the end of summer I looked out back to see them riding a little red bicycle. Let me tell you, seeing 5 kids share a bike is an amazing feat. They would ride it bare footed and at times three of them would be on it at once. Those kids loved that bike.<\/p>\n
Then the red bicycle got a flat tire. However, the kids didn\u2019t care. They would still ride it up and down the alley with a flat. Several weeks went by and it still wasn\u2019t fixed. I made the assumption that they dad didn\u2019t know how to fix it.<\/p>\n
A few days later while I was in my garage breaking something (some call it wood working) the Swahili \u00a0kids were out riding that bike. I turned on my air compressor and dragged my air hose to the alley. They rode by and I motioned them to come over and they did. Seemed that even though we didn\u2019t speak in each other language we could still communicate.<\/p>\n
They brought the bike over to me. I reached down and removed the air cap and started to put air in the tire. All five of the kid surrounded me and watched in awe at what I was doing. I swear it looked like a photo that would grace the cover of National Geographic.<\/p>\n
Then in the tire blew up in about ten different pieces. Rubber went every where and scared the shit out of the kids and me.<\/p>\n
The first thing that went through my mind was \u2018Shit!\u2019.<\/p>\n
Here I try to do a good deed and just make matters worse. I was speechless. I looked at the kids and said I was sorry. Thank god none of them were crying that would have made me feel worse than I already did. I quickly grabbed my hose and walked back into the garage and shut it.<\/p>\n
The next day, the kids pass me on the sidewalk, riding that same bike.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Back in June of 2010 we had some new neighbors move into the house behind mine. Our driveways are shared by a back alley. I\u2019m not Andy Griffith or Mr. Rogers \u2013 meaning I didn\u2019t go introduce myself or welcome the family to town. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I\u2019m not a mean old bastard, cranky, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[58],"class_list":["post-780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tidbits","tag-tidbits"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":782,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780\/revisions\/782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}