Five years ago a neighbor I barely knew dropped by another neighbor’s house while we were having a small barbecue (he had not been invited but they have a very open door policy at their house). Neighbor was about 18 months out from a divorce and could speak of nothing else but his ex-wife.
“Hey, these steaks are great!”
“You know who doesn’t like steak? My ex.”
“Pass the salad, please.”
“My ex is so obsessed with salad. She has it for lunch five days a week. I never tried to stop her, because that’s how nice I am. Not that it did me much good in our marriage…”
Repeat ad nauseam.
Neighbor had brought his literally autistic son with him to the barbecue, who mostly played with his Marvel figures under the table the whole time. (He was almost 13 at the time.) At some point my buddy mentioned that I have a connection to one of the actors in a Marvel franchise. Cue complete sperging from the kid, demanding that I get him an autograph. Instead of telling his son to chill out, his father egged him on.
When I left, the kid followed me home, whining the whole way about how I HAD to get him an autograph. The next day, I started getting multiple phone calls a day from the kid, whose father had given him my number. I blocked the number and avoided the two of them until I moved away four years ago. Every couple of months or so, the kid (now in college) will call me from other people’s phones to ask where his autographed picture is. I don’t answer numbers I don’t recognize so I ended up with 23 voicemails regarding this, which I held onto so my mailbox would be too full to receive further messages.
