Creepy Neighbor

   I grew up in an older, but nice neighborhood. Everyone in the homes around us was over the age of 60 and every yard was well-kept, as were the homes themselves. It was a well-established neighborhood; The kind that has giant shade trees lining the streets and you can just tell those homes have been lived in for a long long time. Of course, there's always that one neighbor that has let their house go for too many years, who you rarely see and you can't help but wonder, "what goes on in that house?"
   The unkempt home in my childhood neighborhood was that of the creepiest man I've ever encountered. The house itself was huge. It was completely overgrown with moss, vines and weeping willow trees. It was on a corner lot and its giant, un-mowed back yard was only yards from the neighborhood pond, but all of the kids in the area would walk all the way around the neighborhood en route to the pond in order to avoid the "creepy guy's house." My sister and I were convinced, unjustly I'm sure, that he was a murderer or a rapist and that he sat at his window watching the neighborhood goings-on at all hours of the day. He was about my parents' age and never once had a visitor as far as we could tell. He would come out once or twice a week in dirty sweatpants with uncombed hair and no shirt covering his round belly to collect his mail and pile of newspapers, and it always seemed like the sun hurt his eyes and his skin.
   We lived in that neighborhood from the time I was born until I was 19 years old and for 19 years we tried figuring this guy out. Who was he? How did he earn a living? And why was he such a weird-o?! Just a couple of years back, my sister saw his picture in the paper. It was an entire article all about the great doctor and the medical advances he had patented, which allowed him to retire at 40. He had two sons and an ex-wife who had taken his boys out of state and remarried. All those years he was just a sad and lonely doctor who had earned his early retirement and lazy, sweatpants-ridden life. He never hurt anybody. It really made me think about the first impressions I allow myself to come up with provided no information whatsoever. I've since vowed to take careful consideration of the facts that I've been given before jumping to conclusions about people I otherwise don't know anything about. It's the littlest things that always wind up being the most important in the end.