Heads up: Stone Temple Pilots reference in the title, hey-ho! I should totally get paid for musical referencing, guys, I really should.

Three guys moved into the house across the street from us, after being abandoned for…well, for longer than we’ve been here (a year in June). As mostly elderly people live in our neighbourhood, one of the three dudes – I’m going to call him Sam, as he’s 6’9″ and reminds me of Supernatural‘s Sam – Sam is the grandson of the woman who lived in the house before she died. He’s living with a college buddy – I’ll call him Dean¹, because apparently he looks just like Jensen Ackles – and another friend – I’ll call Nick for Nick Swardson, since he’s quite the comedian.

They started coming over to the house to talk the sister and a friend, and when they came over Saturday my parents, being the chatty-patty’s that they are, were all like HAI COME OVER AND DRINK AND STUFFZ. You can imagine the next three hours, which involved Nick cat-calling to me to come out and meet them – something that wasn’t going to happen unless Gerard Butler was cat-calling me to come out and meet them.

For those who don’t know, I have severe social anxiety. I have anxiety attacks, and they affect for me for days after. I can’t control them, and it happens if I’m with a small group of people I know very well, or I’m in a grocery store surrounded by people I don’t. I don’t like anybody witnessing these attacks – it’s very stressful to the people around me, and it ends up making the situation worse – so I don’t go out around crowds, which if you guessed, is very hard to do, especially in the city. So, of course: I wasn’t leaving my room – which was, coincidentally or not – right outside the front porch².

What’s been bothering the past couple of days, however, is not Nick threatening to not give up trying to meet me no matter what – he was rather intoxicated at the time, if not buzzed – or warning everybody he’d mow the yard nude³ and to get out the binoculars⁴ – it’s them hanging out in the front yard, which causes me to lock myself in the house, or in the backyard, away from where they can see me. I’m not afraid of them by any means, I just want to avoid the very-probable panic attack that will ensue.

Soooo-ooo-oo, I came up with a plan: as the men and their friends are consistently outside in their lawn chairs, I thought about going out into the front yard, sitting in the middle of it, and taking pictures of them – right in front of them. Not only would this paint me as a stalker and a huge creep, but it just might make them go inside long enough for me to not be afraid to actually be outside. The kicker: while I’d love to do this for shits and giggles – if their drunken behaviour was anything to go by, it’s likely they’d pose for me or something – I’d never actually do it. As I’ve been dodging the open windows in my own house, I quite sincerely doubt I’d ever get the balls to do it.

…I have been blaring Lady Gaga, Spice Girls and Britney Spears for the past two days, though. THAT’S SOMETHING.

1. « Chris actually started calling him Dean-o!
2. « WHY, HOUSE, WHY MUST YOU BE CRUEL TO ME? I kid, I kid! I’m the dumbass who actually chose the room.
3. « …OK fine, I admit it, I’d definitely come out if he ever did do that (and proposition him? IDK, I’m unstable in the face of male nudity).
4. « This was funny to just about everybody, as the Uncle and I had just been joking about spying on them with binoculars – my sassy zinger was to brag about having a mega zoom on my camera for pictures and zooming peekage, but that’s neither here nor there.