Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never by Lancaster, Jen (e books free to read .txt) 📕

I found a letter to an ex-resident from the State Unemployment Office explaining that one cannot file for unemployment if one has never actually held a job. [Ooh, burn!]

Another piece was a bill for six months of car insurance for thirty-six dollars. Thirty-six dollars. For six months. Seriously. What the hell were they driving? A rickshaw? Conestoga wagon? One of those old-fashioned bikes with the enormous front tire piloted exclusively by he-men sporting handlebar mustaches, wearing leotards, and carrying anvils?

I discovered programs from gang members’ funerals and receipts for inmate commissary purchases in the Cook County Department of Corrections. [Ask me how much a pack of Kools cost in 1997 at Cook County lockup because I totally know.] Plus there were tons and tons of those tiny zippy plastic bags that my creative girlfriends use to separate beads for when they do crafts. (Clearly the ex-neighbors were running a jewelry-making business.)

Then I found a letter that was like winning the Gladys Kravitz Nosy Neighbor Memorial Sweepstakes. Here’s what it said:

Dear Pat,

Hey, baby! How are you today! I hope and pray that you and the kids are fine.

Well, this is one of those situations I just won’t be able to slick my way out of… and [only] by chance if I did. By any means, my mind would still be at a blank. Meaning that you’re there and whether [I’m] in here or out there you and the family is still there. But I ain’t mad at ya! Believe me when I say that OK, baby, I’m sorry I took so long writing you. But I just had to find someone—myself. [I’m going to award him a couple of bonus points here for self-awareness.] And now that I have done that, whatever life throws at me, I can catch it and run with it.

Yes, I’ve gained weight [Oh, honey, who hasn’t?] and gotten my health up, smiling and laughing now. But I shouldn’t have been so hard-headed. And had to come here to do this. I blame no one but myself for that. If by any chance I lose you or my family, I don’t blame you. Please, please don’t spin a brother. I can take it in the raw if you’re with someone else or talking about getting with someone else, I won’t trip. [This is where I start to feel sorry for him.]

Stop!! Before responding, play it like it’s two thirty in the morning and me and you are having one of those “honesty nights.” You do remember that I could be honest with you. I’ve never lied to you during one of those honest nights. So let’s play like we are having one… starting now.

Patricia, I love ya, I’ll always love ya. I miss my family and everything. I can’t imagine myself without you. But you really want to ask me the thousand dollar question. Have I been conversing with Natalie and Regina or Kimberley? Right. You don’t have to say it, I know. Well, Kimberley asked me to call her about twenty times but I didn’t… until today. Regina and I talked about two or three times. Nat I haven’t called but Moms relays a message to Ronnell for me, both talking the same old county-jail-shit about how they’re going to be there for a brother when I get out. I really don’t want to hear that, let alone their voices. But a [very bad word]’s here and sometimes I get BORED. I’d rather talk to you but at the same time, I don’t want to be bothering you too much either… I ain’t new to this but true to this. [I am so stealing this line.]

I know how it is when a [very, very bad word] gets LOCKED THE FUCK UP. His ass is out and motherfuckers want to spin ya ass like a top. Well, I ain’t about to get dizzy. [Again, I feel this is a bit profound. He’s beginning to win me over.] My dizzy days are OVER… so I ask you now to be real with me and level with me about your life now.

The last thing I need is for my wife [Hold the damn phone! Wife? WIFE? Pat is your WIFE? So what you’re saying is that instead of writing to your wife, you choose to converse with Regina, Nat, and Next Door first? You had me and then you lost me.] to be lying to me because she feels it’s the right thing to do. Not in this case it ain’t. Hey, baby, I’ll always love ya! But if there’s another, let me move on…

That’s where the first page ended. Fletch arrived home to find me scaling the construction Dumpster with my good whacking shovel in search of the second page because I couldn’t stand not knowing what happened next.

Yes.

That was well received.

Not only did Fletch forbid me from additional adventures in urban archeology, but he made me store my shovel in the garage before washing my hands no less than six times.

At his behest, I grudgingly promised to hang up my (figurative) binoculars because we were in a nice house and an up-and-coming neighborhood and he didn’t want me to alienate myself exactly like everywhere else we ever lived.

“Fine,” I replied. “Then I’ll just watch television.” [We all know how that turned out.]

Unfortunately for those of us in the Gladys Kravitz Anonymous Twelve-Step Program, this proved difficult not because I lacked the willpower, but because we lived in such tight quarters with the house to the right. Our homes were so close we could hear our neighbors sneeze and the ding of their microwave when their Orville Redenbacher Kettle Corn finished popping. We heard them yawning and watching American Idol and running their dishwasher. And the night one of them had a bad egg salad sandwich?

Let’s just say there’s some stuff you can’t unhear.

Our balconies were practically on top of each other with nothing