Posted by Kate at March 24th, 2006

Last night I became one of those people. Last night I began spying on my neighbor. It snuck up on me, I wasn’t expecting it, but somewhere along the line I became suburban, dammit. I had just finished putting Sophie to bed when I went to close the curtains in my front window. I had just been thinking about how I hated being home without my husband, he was out of town last night, and letting my imagination run wild with what I might spy outside my window, a burglar, a rapist. Imagine my surprise when I found two police cars in front of my neighbor’s house. I immediately called my neighbor, not the neighbor, but another one to see if she was aware of the police presence on our quiet little street. She wasn’t aware and called to her husband to go take the trash out and see if he could find out what was going on. But I could tell them much better since I was the house directly across the street and as of right then nothing was going on. I got off the phone with my neighbor so she could call another neighbor to see if they knew anything. The next twenty minutes was spent spying out the window in my door and talking to my nieghbors on the phone. I saw a couple of civilian cars pull up and enter the house so I knew something was going on in the house and then eventually a fire truck and ambulance arrived, no sirens, just lights. They took a gurney in and brought someone out, to me it looked like a woman with dark hair, although my neighbor thought it looked like an old man. I racked my brain about why police would have been there for so long before an ambulance if someone was hurt, was it domestic abuse? Had someone broken in to her home and hurt her? I guess I’ll never know. She’s new to our cul de sac and none of us really know her. So, why am I writing about this. Because this is my confession. My name is Kate and I have been sucked in by the suburban lifestyle of gossip and speculation. The first step is admitting it.