This is Seriously Weird
Written by Lyssa Graham 

The strangest thing happened the other day. There was a commotion outside of my house. The commotion wasn’t the strange thing. Commotions are not all that unusual outside of my house because all summer long the neighborhood has been infested with children.

I don’t have anything against children. I like these particular children. They’re cute, they like to play outside and they’re fairly entertaining. These are the smallish variety of children – roughly age loud and shrill to age incredibly loud and shrill. These children have a fondness for brightly colored sugar water. Because we do not have children of our own, we were not adequately prepared for the effect of brightly colored sugar water on children.

It makes them crazy.

Brightly colored sugar water makes small children run around in circles and scream at the top of their lungs. It makes them leap on fences, live oaks, parked cars that most assuredly do not belong to them and anything else that crosses their wee, little paths. Purple sugar water is the worst. Crazy making stuff, purple.

But again, commotions of the screaming children variety are not all that uncommon. The commotion raised by the dynamic dog duo, Death Breath Three and Four, every time the children screech outside the gate in not unusual either. It goes like this: the screaming children ride their bicycles up and down the sidewalk in front of our house. They do this all day long. Each time they pass the front of our house, the Death Breaths are taken completely by surprise. Never mind that the children pass the front of the house roughly 7000 times each hour. Each time is still completely shocking and new for the Death Breaths.

Surprised Death Breaths react by barking at the top of their lungs and flinging themselves at the doors and windows. This is very unpleasant. Not for the Death Breaths, they love barking and flinging. It’s unpleasant for the people who are older than age loud and shrill to age incredibly loud and shrill.

The loud and shrill types look at berserker Death Breaths as a kind of encouragement and applause for their own loud, shrill behavior and simply amp up their volume and ear-piercingness in response. It’s fantastic, really.

Each day in my neighborhood follows the same pattern. SCREEEEECH!!!! giggle, giggle SCREEEECH! BARK, BARK, BARK, whine, scratch, fling, BARK SCREEEECHH!!! Giggle, giggle. BARK. FLING. Oh for the love of all that’s holy, SHUT UP!!!!!

I am going to have to puncture my own eardrums to escape the commotion. I’m not sure if I have any other choice. I’ve been told that it is considered bad form to stuff shrill children and barking dogs into a box together and let them shriek it out. Something about cruelty to animals. Whatever.

So, the point of all that (at last) is that I can stand a little commotion. It takes a serious weirdness to capture my attention. And let me tell you, I saw something seriously weird the other day.

There was this strange sound, I think it’s called quiet or silence or something like that. It was so jarring that I looked out the window and that’s when I saw the weird. There was a city truck in the street in front of my house. A whole bunch of men wearing safety vests and carrying shovels were milling about near the truck. The men were scraping the shovels back and forth in the gutters. Then, whenever the shovels filled up with sand, dirt, shrieky-children detritus and the like, the men would dump the shovels into bags and barrels on the back of the truck. Then, when the truck was full and the men with shovels couldn’t scrape anything else up, the truck and the men took the bags of yuck away. And, this is where it gets extra weird, it was Sunday. Oh my word!

I can’t be sure but I think what the men were doing is called “cleaning the streets.” It was astounding. I don’t know how or when it started. I know that it’s got the neighborhood on edge. Friends called to report this “street cleaning” stuff in front of their houses too. Trash is disappearing from our streets. What on earth is going on here?

Is there a parade scheduled? Are we going to be on television? Did BP spill some oil in the street? Did we win the lottery? Were we invaded by neatnik aliens? It’s almost as if someone in the City government wants to clean up the city. Really clean it up. What the hell?

Don’t bother to answer that. It doesn’t matter. Whoever, whatever, however, moreover, whosoever made this street cleaning thing happen, thank you. Thank you very much. Please don’t quit doing this street cleaning thing. Once we get used to the shock and awe of it, I think we’re going to want you to stick around.

Lyssa Graham is based on Galveston, a funky little island just south of Texas. She has a sparkly clean street in front of her house and she’s practically giddy with delight. Contact her at Lyssa@LyssaGraham.com

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