The Icelandic Canadian - 01.09.2004, Qupperneq 29

Vol. 59 #1
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
27
Short Story
The Neighbour
by David Jon Fuller
There was a point in my life when I
became convinced that my immediate fam-
ily was in fact the bane of my existence. My
siblings felt the same way, and that was
about all we agreed on, from my older
brother, Brian, to my sisters Lisa and
Tammi, down to me, the so-called "baby"
of the family. I strongly resented the infan-
tile epithet; after all, I was nine. My par-
ents, of course, did not appreciate the strife
that we kicked up daily; perhaps the isola-
tion imposed on us by our location in the
semi-rural area of Bird's Hill, just outside
of Winnipeg, exacerbated the situation. My
mother, particularly, was mystified by the
change which had taken place over a couple
of months one winter; unlike my father,
she didn't quite accept the theory that our
family simply had Too Many Teenagers. I
had my own theory as to the source of our
problems, but of course nobody would lis-
ten to me.
Our family was going through many
changes, although for most of us it was
simply puberty. Brian was almost done
with it. Ever since he had gotten his dri-
ver's license and didn't need either of our
parents to drive him when he wanted to go
into town, the frequency with which he
absolutely needed the car increased dra-
matically. I hypothesized that this had a lot
to do with the fact that Brian was seeing
someone. Her name was Linda. I did have,
even at that age, a theoretical knowledge at
least of what occurred when carrying on
relations with the opposite sex; however,
this was limited to the number of episodes
of Happy Days I had seen.
My sister Lisa had started seeing her
first boyfriend, a fellow by the name of
Wes, sometime around Christmas, and
even a month later she was still constantly
flitting about, fixing her makeup, doing her
hair, or changing her outfits, something
like a cross between a fashion model and a
bumblebee. I was still at the sensible age
when girls were gross, so I was able to
observe her fascinatingly adolescent behav-
iour from a reasonably objective stand-
point. I was also carefully watching
Tammi, who was twelve, for any signs of
such ridiculous behaviour.
She was beginning to take things in life
very seriously; they were just not the same
things that everyone else thought were
important. For example, it was a pressing
concern for her to discover whether our
grandfather's old wardrobe was in fact
capable of providing access to Narnia, or
just how much garlic it took to ward off
vampires, or if the nearby ranch was secret-
ly breeding unicorns. I was often both
impressed and intrigued by her theories,
but I often noticed that while she was
always willing to expound her latest beliefs,
rarely was my input welcome. For this rea-
son, I continued to keep to myself.
I knew everybody in the neighbour-
hood by then, partly because we had lived
there for a few years, but mostly because I
had a paper route and I knew where every-
one lived. It meant a fair amount of riding
my bicycle in the summer and trudging
through the snow in the winter, but I did-
n't mind, because I got to know a lot more
about the world; on a particularly long
stretch between driveways, I might finish
an entire article before having to to re-fold
the paper and tuck it into the mailbox by
the side of the road.