When my husband and I moved into our house nearly six years ago, I was not aware that I was moving into a ghetto.

And when I say a ghetto, I don’t mean an actual ghetto with street urchins asking for tuppence or rats running on all visible ledges made of brick.  I just mean a neighborhood where emergency response vehicle sirens are common place.  I hear a lot of sirens.  All the time.  And initially I wasn’t too bothered by that fact until I realized that whenever I heard sirens, the sound would always stop in my aural vicinity (who the hell uses a phrase like “aural vicinity”?  I think I should coin it.  It’s coined.  Pay me if you want to use it).  The whirring of the ambulances and fire trucks horn blasts and cop car cries would all settle down and stop somewhere near or on my street.

At first, years ago, I’d be alarmed.  I’d be worried that someone had choked on a chicken bone (because I see lots of people gnaw on bones regularly in the year 2012) or an old woman had fallen in the shower and had to push one of those emergency medallion thingies she wears around her neck to seek out help because she’s all alone and all of her friends are dead or in rest homes and her one daughter, Maggie, is a heartless bitch that only sends a card on her mother’s birthday and never on Easter even though Maggie is aware that her mother is extremely and fatally Catholic (if you die believing in something, does that belief contribute to your death?).  Anyway, I’d be worried for people.  Rarely did I think, “Oh shit, someone’s getting shived in the thigh” or “Why can’t we get this domestic violence issue under control” because I like to think well of people and envision them passively coming to horrific ends instead of actively coming to horrific ends.

Now, not so much alarm with the sirens.  Firstly, because everyone can’t be dying.  Every street in a half-mile radius would be fully lined with houses empty of humans.  And if that were the case I’d already have a blanket fort spanning seven streets.  So not a lot of death.  Then what is it?  Drugs?  Whore beat-downs? Stolen dreams (I’m literally laughing right now at my own joke…)?

I’ve come to the conclusion that most of the sirens indicate that Meth is lurking around the neighborhood.  Meth is, in fact, so powerful it gets capitalized.  There is nothing to indicate that Meth is the reason for sirens, but I think that life is just easier when we blame all things on Meth.  There isn’t a person out there that is going to defend Meth and its rights and feelings.  Didn’t get into college?  It’s probably all the fault of Meth.  Gained fifteen pounds over Christmas?  Well, if Meth wasn’t so damn useful for weight-loss AND evil it would cure you of your fatness.  Fucking inconsiderate Meth.

So I heard sirens today and I thought of Meth.  Good old Meth.

Except then I considered that perhaps the sirens weren’t always Meth alarms.  What if, instead, rescue teams were constantly responding to really fucking cool things that I WAS NOT INVITED TO PARTICIPATE IN (I ended that with a preposition in CAPS.  I flaunt grammar rules, even in the face of overwhelming Meth).  This really bothers me.   There might be a moonshine still a few houses down and I haven’t been asked to chew up spoiled fruit and spit it in the oil drum to help make the liquor because that is obviously how a still works.  Maybe illegal fireworks are being made by Nepalese refugees who then sell those illegal fireworks to Mexican immigrants so they can shoot them off at quinceneras and probably have Roman Candles they could sell me if I only knew they were for sale to Mexican immigrants and me but no on has told me that I can buy them.  Or there could be a porn set somewhere.  Filming any kind of porn.  I wouldn’t know what kind because I’m not a key grip on the set because obviously my neighborhood is cold and impersonal and has lost all sense of what it means to be a community.  Fuckers.

There is one house specifically that seems to have a lot of fun.  Well, the house doesn’t have fun.  But the people in it do.  And I won’t list the address here because I don’t want the people that live in that house to axe to me pieces but if you really want to know the address just message me and I’ll tell you and you can drive by it really slowly and take pictures after church on Sunday.  Now that I think of it, maybe it is the house that has a lot of fun because approximately six to eight different families/tribes/groups of random derelict motorcyclists have lived in that one house.  It attracts fun people that do fun things like Meth.  It’s Boise’s own Hell Mouth a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  But instead of attracting vampires it attracts people that put Barcaloungers in the front lawn.

Most of the time when sirens stop in my neighborhood, they are stopping outside this house.  Last Saturday night my husband and I were both making our way home in separate cars when I got a lively text from him:

Husband: Well I can’t turn into our fucking street cause of those goddamn degenerate fuckholes that live in that crackhouse!!!  FUCK!!!

Me: What?  I’m coming.

Husband: FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

(I’m aware that these last two bits of dialogue are a little naughty when taken out of context.  Now you are aware of it as well).

When I got to the entrance to our street and saw three cop cars surrounding the House o’ Fun, my heart sank.  It was three a.m., I was tired after a night of dancing and socializing, and my dress was mysteriously damp with something that a friend pronounced as “smelling of egg” and yet, my heart did its sinking.  For I was not invited to the debauchery.  Yet again.

I bet gramps drank too much Orange Crush avec rubbing alcohol and whipped his junk out, decorated it with pom-pom balls and waved it around to people out walking their dogs because that’s what I would do if I ever wanted the sirens to stop outside my door.

Or Meth.

Basically I fucking love my ghetto that’s not a real ghetto because I’m thankful for things in my life.  It’s called optimism, bitches.