The Consortium

We took LMJ for some proto-trick-or-treating Halloween night. She seemed to enjoy taking candy out of the bowl and putting it in her purse – more about the journey than the destination. She was a little bit fussy, and I don’t know if it was because we were getting close to her bedtime, or if there were too many other children around sucking up attention from the community. MJ and I did some parenting networking, which was long overdue. We met a few new families from down the block and our across the street neighbors. They all have children, and only one of them is over five. Fifteen years in and our neighborhood is turning into a neighborhood. I used to hate all my neighbors, but digging in like a tick has paid off, and now I don’t hate them anymore. I even wrote about it on here, but I’m far too lazy to go find it. It’s easier to hate people when you just stare at them out of a window. The networking is important because there are access points in all four directions – there’s water to the south and east, and ghetto to the north and west. If we want to keep as many of our children as possible alive then we, as a neighborhood, need to share intel and back each other up. We need to work together to keep the 2700 block as safe as we can: Putting up stop signs and gates to enter, chipping in with shovels and alibis if a boyfriend’s corpse needs to be disposed of because he brought a daughter home late without an acceptable excuse. Looking out for one another so no one gets caught in a conversation with the block drunk – yes we have our own Otis – etc. We’ll run it like the Mob. We’ll be the literal Five Families. I have to go. I need to get a pinstripe suit.