David McElroy

The two women had been talking very quietly, so I hadn’t been paying attention to them. Then the old woman suddenly raised her voice in anger.

“I am not going to let you make the same mistake I made!” she almost shouted.

It was late Sunday afternoon at a slow restaurant. Other than me, they were the only two customers. The younger was about 35; the older might have been 60. Now I was curious what they were talking about, but the woman lowered her voice again.

Now it was the younger woman’s turn to be a little too loud, but her voice was steady and almost cold.

“You really don’t care that I’m miserable, do you, Mother?” she said firmly. “I know what you think I should do. I know you think I have no right to rock the boat or give up all the things you think I should want. But this is my life. I know you hate the choices you made — but I am miserable. And all you can think about is yourself and your miserable life.”

I kept my eyes on my MacBook and didn’t look in their direction.

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I shot a casual photo of Lucy in front of our house this afternoon. She was happy in the warm summer sunshine. And I liked the perspective of the house behind her. It made her seem like the world’s friendliest guard dog.

After I posted the photo in a couple of places, a friend called me to say how much she loved it. Then she asked if I could take the same sort of picture of her dog in front of her house. I hesitated.

My house is an inexpensive old home in a mixed neighborhood. It was built in 1927. It originally didn’t even have running water. (I don’t know when the kitchen and bathroom were added.) I bought it six years ago as a cheap foreclosure. It’s nothing fancy.

My friend’s home is in a high-end suburb in a much nicer part of town. It’s worth about half a million dollars. The house has all the features that modern consumers want. But to anyone who understands symmetry and principles of design beauty, her house is a monstrosity. It’s an ugly crime against design.

How could I explain to my friend that her fancy house would look terrible as a background for her dog? How could I say that without insulting her taste?

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My plumbing problem wasn’t a big deal, but the solution was beyond my meager fix-it skills. I went next door to ask my neighbor whether he knew how to replace the “seat and springs” on a faucet.

He and I worked on the problem together for about an hour before he decided he couldn’t do it either, so he called another neighbor — someone I don’t know — who lives about a block away. He said Brian used to work in plumbing a long time ago, so he could fix it.

After my neighbor left and it was just Brian and me, we were comparing notes about which neighbors we knew and didn’t know. I mentioned one guy who’s never been very friendly and Brian agreed.

“He seems kind of like a jerk, but I suspect it’s mostly that he’s not very social,” he said. “He just doesn’t have any social skills, unlike you, ’cause you’re obviously social and outgoing. I’ll bet you could talk to anybody. He can’t do that.”

I didn’t say what I was thinking, but I laughed inside. Me? “Social and outgoing”? Well, I see why he thinks so. And I found myself conscious once again that I was running a “social script.” Without thinking about it, I was playing the part of the friendly neighbor.

But I was just running an unconscious social script. It didn’t mean a thing.

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