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My Frenemy

 My frenemy painted his house blue. Previously, it had been a kind of odd, ugly, minty green, and I respected the green; I respected the weirdness of the green. The particular shade of blue is just boring. It could be called "Conformist Blue."


I was thinking these hateful thoughts while walking my dog the other day; then, I spotted my frenemy's husband. This was a chance to mend fences--but, instead, I turned away and willed myself to be invisible (just as you might sit in the back row in high-school English, if you had forgotten to do the assigned reading).

A few weeks ago, I was fined for a failure to clear snow from my sidewalk. I wondered if my frenemy had called in an anonymous tip. It's madness to spiral with that kind of thinking--so I told myself to stop.

I do know that my frenemy's children are alive and well; I see photos of the birthday parties I am no longer invited to. The photos are stagey and lacking in imagination; you would put them aside and think, "I bet the photographer lives in a house whose exterior is painted in dull tones of black and Conformist Blue." 

Will we bury the hatchet? Madonna and Elton John recently resumed talking after twenty years of silence; Madonna had been angry because Elton dismissed her Brosnan-era Bond theme song as "unacceptable." The other day, Elton spotted Madonna at an "event," and he dramatically mouthed the words "FORGIVE ME" ....and a glacier began to melt.

Time will tell.
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