I don't really know my neighbors.  Who does?

But I can see their future.

There's a young couple, no kids, across the street, and I was looking across at their yard from my balcony when something about it struck me as odd - a little cartoonish.  I at first thought my ragged neurons were to blame, but, comparing their yard to the others around it, I realized that it wasn't me, after all - there was actually something off about the yard itself, though I couldn't nail it down.

And then, finally, I really saw it.

The white picket fence.

Perhaps this is something specific to Americans of a certain age and older, but I feel very strongly that the white picket fence has long since changed from what it once was - something decorative, and perhaps practical, that was a commonplace because it made sense in its time and place, due to reigning aesthetics, available materials, or whatever it was - and that it has become something else entirely.

It has developed into a symbol, a glyph, and, ultimately, like all our most cherished symbols, like the skull and the crucifix - into a cartoon.

I remember being small, and a child, and knowing something instinctively in the way of children.  I told my mother that I wanted, someday, to have a house with a white picket fence.

And that is what it is - the visible sign of the incohate fantasies of those who choose it.  A caricature, a puerile vision - tranquil domesticity, and the bland serenity of settled - safe - marriage.  A fable, a Hallmark card, a soap opera, and, of course, a scam.

I give them 2 years at the outside.

Ah, but smart money says my love and I last until one of us kicks it.