Hi, y'all. I don't really know who you are, if you're related to the nice 28% people I wrote to a while back or if you're different.
But I've been hearing a lot about you lately. Lots of diaries here. They were even talking about you on the radio today. It's like you're famous like Britney or something.
Look, I know I don't know you and it probably isn't my place and all, but, from what I've been hearing about you, from what I've heard your heroes say on the TV and the radio and stuff, I feel I've got to tell you a couple of things.
They say you're buying up all the guns and bullets, because you think socialists or black people are going to send you to camps or turn your dollars into euros or something. I didn't get all the details.
I really didn't have to. It didn't take much to understand the important thing about you. You're crazy.
Okay, yeah, I can understand how me saying that puts you off a little. Maybe this is where the conversation ends. That's cool. No hard feelings.
But there is one thing I'd like you to understand. You can't come around here.
In my neighborhood, we've got a pretty delicate balance going here. We've got some well-to-do folks, some poor people, a lot of working stiffs, retirees. We've got black, brown, white, really pink, some cool mixed colors I don't know the names for. We've got a real, live crazy person, too, son of a really nice woman up the street. Poor thing doesn't really know what to do with him and the city was already pretty stretched in dealing with folks like that, before the governor announced he was moving our main crazy people hospital to the North Shore. Hell, you want to hear about diversity, we've even got a Republican up the block. Lord love him.
We do our best to get along, even though we're all really different. D across the way loves blasting his Dirty South sound, which I don't really like, even though I was in the studio when a lot of his records were made. He doesn't get why I listen to old time country gospel, even though I don't go to church and he does.
L across the street runs a big environmental program for a university. She even explained cap-and-trade legislation so I could understand it. Old G up the block doesn't even know what a carbon atom is, but she tears up when she sees polar bears swimming for distant ice floes on the TV and asks L what we can do.
D is one of the most politically astute people around, but has to be reminded to vote every election day. M down the block on the other side is one of the most gifted artists I've met and doesn't know what grant-ap artspeak is.
You see, we're not perfect. We've got a lot of gaps to fill, and thank goodness we've got such a broad palette nearby to paint from. It helps us all get up to speed. Shared resources, pooled skills, all that.
We've learned we need that sort of strength here. We've learned just what an unfeeling government can mean in tough times. Sometimes I wonder if y'all got your crazy ideas about gun confiscation and FEMA camps from watching too many TV shows about us.
Yeah, that's right. That neighborhood. The one where all that went down.
It was bad. It was bad after. And it came after a long run of other kinds of bad. That hasn't really let up since. So much so that when we hear you saying, "They're gonna take all the guns away!" our first reaction might not be the OMG you're looking for.
But that's kind of a side issue here. Mostly what I want you to know is that the bad stuff that's happened here hasn't made us afraid of each other. It's made us depend on each other, like we never have before. The way our government let us down, screwed us over, if you want to know the truth, has made us realize that we're stuck here with each other and we've got to be able to look after each other, no matter what color or age or gender or wealth status.
You see, what happened in my neighborhood taught us something very important. We may not understand each other all that well. We may not think and talk and look and act like each other. Hell, we may not even like each other.
But we've learned that we can trust each other. We can count on each other. Because we've learned that we're all in this together.
So if you want to have a war with some kind of "other people," don't bring it here. We're pretty busy just getting through it all.
And, because I like you and think you should have a fair heads up, we've had guns since long before you got scared on election day last year.
Take care and best of everything.
Your neighbor.