text: Neighbors “There he goes again,” The old man spat out with derision. On the cusp of retirement, he couldn’t have been more than 60. His solid grey comb-over, fooling no one, appeared to be painted on the top of his head; and a salt-a-pepper goatee, which he thought fashionable- much to his wife’s dismay. “He needs to learn some respect,” The wife responded pointedly, “My mother would have beaten me over the head had I acted in such a manner.” “Parents are too soft on kids these days. My parents used to kick us out of the house and tell us not to come back until supper’s ready! If I even thought about disrespecting my elders my father’s belt would be off before I could blink! Look at us, we turned out fine,” he punctuated with a long drag on his cigarette, “People like him are ruining this country.” The wife grunted in solidarity, effectively returning them to the silence that drowned out their lives. Their marriage was a product of their time, something they referred to as “Traditional American Values,” whatever that meant. One of their many mantras designed to rationalize the abundance of change around them. Words, to them, did not simply abide by their dictionary definitions. To the old man and his wife, letters and syllables and phrases all combined to meet one basic threshold: reinforce their stagnant, preconceived ideology. The old man and his wife had been together for over forty years, and it showed. They could hardly stand to be in the same room together, conversations were sparse and generally conflicting; in fact the only time they seemed to get along was when reminiscing about the glory of their youth. High school sweethearts, they devoted their lives together at eighteen years old- kids. Together they made the rounds; they went to college, they bought a house and they had children. Now with an empty nest, it was time for them to progress to the next stage of their life. Though they had bought their house for a sizable $40,000 at the time, their property was now worth a staggering $300,000, and since the wife had decided that she'd had enough of the brutal northern winters, they were to move south in retirement upon the sale of their family home. The old man and his wife had big plans over the coming years. They would travel and visit the beautiful scenery the Earth has to offer, eat expensive food and wash it down with expensive drinks. They had both dreamed of this their entire lives, this is what they had worked for. Though neither of them wished to be there with each other, and more notably neither the old man, nor his wife, would be able to cope with society moving past them. \- - - - - A young man walked down the sidewalk with confidence. His brown hair drifting with the wind, and youthful blue eyes that pierced through the people with which he conversed. Music blaring through his wireless earbuds and cigarette lit, there was but one thought on his mind, “What an amazing time to be alive.” As he turns the corner off of the main road back to his house, a new subject becomes the prime topic of his thought, his neighbors house. A fine house, he had no objections to its architecture, but to the people inside. He had never met them, yet there burned a passionate distaste for them in his soul. His eyes were glued to the top of the flagpole on the property. “How can anyone believe in this bullshit?” He pondered as he raised a carefully selected middle finger towards the red flag, “Fucking assholes.