(Did you remember that I have a house for sale? A lovely home with an enormous fenced yard RIGHT NEXT TO EVERYTHING but far enough away to be quiet, and I also have the most amazing neighbors on the planet, little kids to play with, teen lawnmowers and babysitters, and a free kitten. Act now, and this home can be yours!)

One recent realtor showing happened on a night when Joe was out on a business call, and since we only have one car, I planned to go for a walk when the family arrived. I was studying my Brit Lit when I heard them come in, so I left through the sliding door and through the back yard to the nature trail.

After I strolled around our block a couple of times, I decided to just wait across the street for the homebuyers to leave. I sat down under our neighbor’s pear tree. The sun finished setting and I started to wonder what was taking the people so long.

I also started to wonder what a neighbor, glancing out a window, might make of a person sitting under a tree in the dark, staring at a house across the street. Would they think I was staking out the house for a heist? My clothes, black pants and a navy sweater, began seem less like an invisibility cloak and more like a screaming sign of a dangerous loiterer. I stood up to take another walk around the block, thereby relieving the fears of any neighbors.

That’s when the realtor and the viewing family walked out of the house.

I was trapped by the tree. If I walked away, I would call attention to my robbery-clothes-wearing and furtive  tree-lurking behavior. The only thing I could do was step partly behind the slender-trunked tree and hope they didn’t see me. As they backed out of the driveway, I realized that my glasses would reflect their tail lights. Crap! I bowed my head and let my hair cover my face, and that’s how the neighbor walking the dog found me: hiding behind a tree, pretending to be invisible while staring at a passing car, with my hair in my pasty white face like the little girl from “The Ring”.

I hope I didn’t scare anyone.

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