Gladys Kravitz

I have a stalker. She's, like, 68 years old and lives up the street from me.

Here's the deal. She was friends with the (older) lady who used to live in this house. The day we were moving in, she walked right into our house amongst the movers and started chatting to me while I was a) five months pregnant b) trying to get the movers to put everything in the right place. It was a stressful visit, mostly because I don't like people I don't know walking right into my house (!!!) and because I was clearly VERY busy and she just chatted along like nothing was amiss. She was like one of those people who stand there talking to you even though you're carrying something heavy that you clearly want to set down, but she won't let you walk far enough away from her to do so without being what she would probably consider "horribly rude". (I'm not sure when it became rude to point out that someone else is being rude, but I guess I don't make the rules for people like that.) She invited me about fifteen times to join some sort of "Bunko" group, which I gather is a card game played by ladies who like to bet on card games and don't like to play poker.

She left that day, way back in September, and after the time about two weeks later than that when she stuffed a copy of the newsletter put out by our homeowner's association that I already had, along with a note asking me to join the Bunko group again because they are down one player now that her friend has moved away, I never heard from her again and I put it out of my mind. I'm not good at telling people, even subtly, "No thanks, I don't think we have anything in common, I'm busy, and I don't really want to hang out with you," so I rather hoped she would take the hint and make friends with someone else who shared her interests. Plus, the lady who lived here just moved to a newer house in another area of town, so they could stay friends.

So yesterday, our phone rang at about 11:00 a.m. and it was a local number. I picked it up (this was my mistake—I never pick up unless I recognize the number, and I can't tell you why I would have broken my rule) and it was her! I can't remember if she got our last name when she was here barraging me with questions back in September, but she must have waited for our number to show up in Information and then called. She asked a LOT of uncomfortably personal questions about the baby (I don't discuss whether I had a C-section or not when I had the baby during an unsolicited phone calls with perfect strangers, I don't care where their house is located) with little to no preamble, as though I was a famous person and she was a reporter for Us Weekly and this sort of publicity was expected. She proceeded to lean on me to bring the baby by her house sometime (!!!) and then talked about Bunko again until I graciously extracated myself.

Before you all hate me, I realize she's just trying to be nice. But intentions are not the only things that matter. Effects matter too, and I'm a very private person in my everyday life (blogs notwithstanding). I think it's a horrible insinuation to look up someone's phone number (why oh why didn't I make it unlisted, I don't know, but the mister doesn't like that) and then call and ask them things like she asked me. Perfect strangers who live on my street don't need to know if she's sleeping in her crib yet or how LONG MY LABOR WAS.

It's as though she's hard coded that she is friends with the lady in this house, and dammit, it doesn't matter that there's been a changing of the guard. She is friends with the person in this house by gosh, and that's just all there is to it.

Come to think of it, the lady who used to live here is a little nosy too, actually. She stopped by a couple of months ago to see how we liked the house, which I thought was odd but not quite as intrusive as the other lady up the street. It also occurred to me that lady we bought the house from might be curious what we've done to it (they lived here from the moment the house was built until they sold it to us, 18 years total) and she may be trying to get her friend to look inside and spill the beans on whether we repainted or replaced anything. (Yes, and yes.) But my goodness, I wish she'd just call and ask if we repainted. I don't think I can take one more Bunko invitation.