She was a sitcom quality neighbor. Her laughter passed walls, hedges, driveways, and entered our house every night…and we didn’t even have to let her in.

Her hair was a massive tree of curls, every branch reaching a different direction, trying to capture the whole of the sun. Her hair tree succeeded. It was jet black.

One day, her tree of jet black hair caught a Japanese beetle. I was in the back seat of her van, watching her drive and scratch her scalp. She didn’t know it was there and I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her. During a previous trip, Ryan joked that there was a spider near her in the van and she nearly swerved our youth into the freeway’s center divider. There was no way in hell.

She kept on scratching and scratching. She got closer and closer.

It was only a matter of time. Her exploring fingers eventually grabbed hold of something and she looked at it, SCREAMED BLOODY MURDER, and hurled the thing at the passenger seat towards Ryan then took both her hands off the wheel to give her hair a violent shake.

“!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!WHAT WAS THAT??????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!WHAT WAS THAT?????!!!!!!!!!”

“Why’d you throw it at ME? BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!” He was in hysterics, not even knowing what had happened, but completely amused by his mom’s reaction.

I quietly chimed in, “It was one of those pretty iridescent beetles.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? You should have told me!”

Nope.

Nope, nope, nope.