Re: A good story

On Tue, 22 Sep 2020 02:17:35 -0500, VictoriaB wrote:
> 
> A neighbor asked for a tomato. This is where the story gets weird
> 
> By Gene Weingarten, Columnist, The Washington Post
> September 17, 2020
> 
> The following account is completely true, and, no, there is nothing
> funny about it.
> 
> I was on my laptop in the dining room of my rowhouse in downtown
> Washington, D.C., when someone rapped at the window. There was a man
> there, in my backyard. This is a good neighborhood, but a gritty one.
> Cautiously, I cracked the door.
> 
> The man was maskless, but as soon as he saw me, he stepped back a few
> feet, creating a social distance, a move that seemed friendly. He was
> in his early 30s, powerfully built. I opened the door fully.
> 
> “My name is Seth,” he said. “I’m a neighbor, and I see you walking
> your big brown dog, and sometimes a cat is with you.” All true. 
> He had
> established his bona fides. “My mother just died, and she loved
> cooking green tomatoes.” He nodded toward my small tomato garden.
> “Could I take a tomato, in her honor?”
> 
> He seemed winningly earnest. “You can’t take a tomato,” I said, “but
> you can take five or six. Just help yourself.”
> 
> He looked at me, and then back at the garden. “Can I take a whole
> plant?” he asked. He sensed my suspicion: It would give him pleasure
> to watch the tomatoes grow, he explained, cooking them up when they
> were large and green enough, the way his ma did.
> 
> My garden isn’t a garden so much as 17 big plastic pots with a plant
> in each. There isn’t much dirt in the inner city, so I’d imported my
> own. His request was a little ... odd, but you know. His ma. I 
> invited
> him to choose a plant, and he did, and waddled off with it. They’re
> pretty heavy.
> 
> A couple of days later I met him in the street. He was still 
> maskless,
> but this time was also shirtless. He reminded me who he was and 
> wanted
> to thank me again for the tomato plants.
> 
> Plants?
> 
> “I came back at night and took another one.”
> 
> Silence. He indignantly asked me to thank him for thanking me for 
> the plants.
> 
> “You stole a plant,” I said.
> 
> At this point he launched into a high-pitched, high-decibel
> condemnation of me. It was personal and nasty. He also informed me
> that he owned five houses and that I should be compassionate and make
> allowances because his mother had died. I began backing away into my
> house. He asked me if I had anything to tell him — he really, really
> wanted that thank you — and I responded that what I most wanted to
> tell him was to wear a mask.
> 
> The next day, there were firetrucks in front of my house. A
> firefighter told me that there had been an altercation involving a
> neighbor and a firefighter was injured. The other end of the 
> block was
> all police cars. One of the cops told me that a man had been selling
> scrounged goods illegally from a nearby parking lot, and that when he
> was confronted, he became violent and smashed the window of a
> firetruck. I looked at the assemblage of scrounged goods. Among the
> items — a door, some clothes hangers, a broken kids’ bike — there was
> at least one big plastic flower pot; no plants inside.
> 
> The officer said the man was being taken into custody. He nodded
> toward a police van. From inside I heard someone screaming, “Let me
> go! My mother died! My mother died!”
> 
> Ah.
> 
> The next day I stopped at a neighborhood convenience store near where
> Seth had been apprehended. The proprietor, whom I know well, told me
> Seth had been a nice man, a good customer, until recently, when he
> began to act erratically. I asked him if Seth had been released from
> jail yet. That’s usually what happens with relatively minor crimes.
> 
> He looked at me like I was nuts.
> 
> “He won’t be released,” he said.
> 
> Why?
> 
> “He’s been charged with murder. He strangled his mother.”

That was a good story, V! :-)
BTW, this group isn't available on ES, so I don't know if 
Sn!pe or anyone on that server can get here.
I've changed my nym for this post so MAD can't google 
group stalk me here. 60+ is looking a bit better. Might 
be worth a go at posting there again.