New Kid in Town

My street is lined with old houses, mine being one of the oldest at 110 years old.  Their age means lots of hardwood:  flooring, trim, you name it.  In the walls of most of them, you can still find the piping used for gas lighting, both upstairs and down.  These houses have value.  When people move in they tend to stay for quite some time.  As a result, I was quite surprised when my neighbor John and his wife and two daughters put their house up for sale.  Evidently a couple of months back a headhunter called and offered him a job down in Houston and he accepted.  The house was on the market for about a week before being sold and closing was last Tuesday.
My neighbors Karen and Mike are going to miss John and his family, they thought they were simply ducky dandy.  Me?  I thought the little girls were spoiled rotten.
Anyway, I asked Mike if he knew who had bought the house and he replied sounding more then a bit disgruntled "some new kid."

The new kid's house

He went on to say "he's a computer geek and makes $200,000 a year."  And then he added "and he's young, 24 years old... and single."  This is not the kind of 'new kid in town' Mike would like as a neighbor.  It's the single bit, you know?  The possibility of having another gay guy in the neighborhood?  So I said to him "good, it's about time we got some young blood in the neighborhood."  All he did was grimace and look away.

I wouldn't be surprised if one of these days I didn't see a 'For Sale' sign in front of Mike and Karen's house.  That would be fine with me.  She's nice but he's weird and it wouldn't surprise me if one of the reasons John took the job down in Houston was to get the girls away from Mike.  Anyway, it will be interesting to see how he handles the new kid in town.