Peer pressure?

 

01/12/84

 

Neighbors again.

This time they are complaining about how I keep my dog out in the cold.

“You leave that animal out all night?” they ask, then mumble when I say, “of course.”

They think the dog will die in the cold as if four years or more out there will make a difference now.

I’m angry again the way I was back when my white cat, Flake, (Snowball by the previous owner) scoped out other people for food when he hated my choice.

The cat had long made its way in the world as a grubber, and knew the soft spots in the neighborhood to hit up. When I offered hard food, it went to other places for scraps.

I accepted that. So did he. But the neighbors accused me of starving the animal and threatened to call the city if it continued to grub.

I resented them and the cat, felling their fingers reaching into my home and forcing me to do things I did not want to do.

My neighbors watch too much television, where they generate ideas about what I ought to feed my cat or what I should do with my dog.

They don’t understand my dog at all, nor have they noticed the situation, assuming I’m being negligent because I don’t bring the dog inside. None even talked to the previous owner, concerning the dog’s habits.

“That dog is going to die out there in the cold,” they tell me.

I tell them they are full of shit and the dog would suffer more inside than out, his long hair making even my limited heat intolerable.

Meanwhile, I feel judged, and fight to urge to go after someone.

But this reaction is my problem.

I’ve always felt and hated the impact of peer pressure.

All my life people have intruded on me. My uncles used to invade my bedroom to find out what I was doing, or kept a watch out for me on the street to see what trouble I was getting into next.

They even grilled me several times to wonder why I tried (more than once) to run away from home, and got angry when I refused to tell him, thinking it was none of their business (although I’m sure the truth would have embarrassed them more than it embarrassed me – since at 11 I tried to run away west to rescue my mother from the mental hospital and later, just wanted to run away from all of them and the madness of the old house.) It is strange how these days I made the same trip by car to visit my Uncle Ritchie, who has taken up residence in the same hospital – each visit recalling the dismal afternoons when I came with my uncles only to have my mother fail to recognize who I was – medication and electro-therapy stealing my memory from her mind.

I should be more understanding with my neighbors.

I should appreciate the fact that they know no better.

But I hate being pressured.

I hate having people look over my shoulders, telling me how to live my life.

I am my own person now.

But each time the lady upstairs stomps up slanted cellar door to pound on my window to inform me about the dog’s water having turned to ice, I cringe.

“I change the water twice a day,” I tell her.

I should ignore her – and them.

Or perhaps I should simply do what they tell me to do.

But I know I won’t.