Good Nesting Skills

I have a title, and thus a theme, but nothing to write about. Where is my Muse today?

Maybe something will come to me in a few minutes.

Meanwhile, I'll continue on a previous theme. A while back, I joked about some old gang buddies of mine who wanted in on my new act. They figured that if I had weathered the economic downturn, then maybe there's some good to get out of me, after all, despite some of my geek/nerd habits that don't interest them.

I ran into one of them yesterday. Funny how many of us go along in our supposedly safe suburban lives, ignorant of the underworld that lurks around every corner, has its fingers on every doorknob and its electronic eyes on every computer keyhole. Anyways, this buddy of mine, he's got a job for me to do. And he thinks I'm going to keep it a little secret between us. As if!* As tech savvy as some of them guys is, they don't never check my blog, does they?

[*Ode to the movie, "Clueless"]

I may've mentioned to you that my new job guarantees at least 10% of the customers will lose interest in the product we're selling and be interested in something else. Well, my good buddy thinks he ought to be gettin' a list of those disinterested customers from me. He doesn't see I don't have a list that says, "Look right here and you'll see the obvious 10%." He thinks that like this week I can hand him one or two names and the same thing each week to give him a steady stream of new customers to sell his goods and services (or recruit them to help in the security enforcement business he runs).

So how long do I keep him at bay before he loses patience? I don't know. I've never crossed paths with my buddies since the time I snitched on one of them for stealing a valuable geode from the father of a schoolmate of ours who'd brought the stones in for show-and-tell in junior high school. My buddies roughed me up a bit, burglarized my parents' house and let me know that anything else stupid I wanted to do would up the ante. They weren't afraid of a little arson, in other words. One guy even burned the house next door to him to prove the point. As far as they's concerned, once you're in the gang, you're in for good. There's only one way out and it ain't a ticket to heaven, as far as they figure it.

Some of my customers haven't shown up yet. They're faceless names to me. Maybe I should just give my buddy a list of those customers. It's after I see faces that I become attached to others, anyway. A name's just an anonymous set of words for a phone book, right?

So while you all go about your innocent days shopping, cooking, mowing, working, studying or whatever else suburbanites do in spring, keep in mind that you live in fantasy land, one foot on Disney's doorstep and one foot on Dante's doorstep. Some of y'all will be ripped in two. Some will live out your fantasies and never know what's going on. The rest of you will be in my gang or a rival gang. I'd like to tell you you have a choice. And maybe some of you will, when the time comes to make a decision. Some of you won't. You'll be like me.

It's not like I look over my shoulder. I'm not paranoid. It's just that sometimes I see a face in a crowd and recognize a certain look, which tells me to expect a message. Or I'll see a familiar gang sign (not all of them are spray-painted by testosterone-juiced adolescents; some are posted in 8.5"x11" pieces of paper taped to the inside of a plate glass window on a storefront or stapled to telephone poles in the neighborhood (ever wonder why "Lost Cat!" posters never seem to belong to any of your neighbors - now you know, but not from me)). Or a strange number on a Caller ID at home that, when I mix it with the anagram name, spells a message from a buddy and leads me to a temporary "job" assignment.

Now what was it I was going to say about good nesting skills? Oh yeah. I'm not a father. Although the idea of my genetic heritage wandering the planet when I'm gone is interesting, I ain't no pappa bird, building up a nice, clean nest for some mamma bird to plop her eggs into. I sure ain't bringing no worms, bugs or chewed-up seeds for any offspring, neither. I ain't gonna pick out the fleas, ticks and other pests that inevitably infest the nest. But I seen some guys like that. I saw them back when I was in college, during my party days, where they'd go around picking up bottles, emptying ash trays and taking out the trash just as soon as all of us party vermin were leaving their place. Wasn't like they were clean freaks. Nothing like that. No wiping down tables and putting coasters everywhere. It's just that they made sure we were out of their flat by midnight or 1 a.m. and the place cleaned up, so they could get some quality shuteye with their wives and babies and have a healthy nest in the morning to wake up to.

I thought of them when I was walking the woods this past week, seeing little groups of birds flying through the trees and finding the oasis of bird seed at the back of my house. Chit-chatting away with each other. Chasing each other around. Warning each other when unknown silhouettes flew overhead (a couple of buzzards). Going quiet when the hawk stopped at my backyard waterfall for a sip of water and maybe a chipmunk snack (chipmunk was too quick that day). They had good social and parenting skills. I don't know if goldfinches, tufted titmouse or other birds have good nesting skills. No matter. They're taking care of their own.

I suppose that's what I'm doing in my way, too. Trimming the deadwood from suburban society. Better make sure your nest is on a strong, living branch. Otherwise...well, you get the picture.