6 Dec 2008

WHEN NEIGHBORS MOVE AND WHAT THEY LEAVE

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When we moved to Waterloo in 1975 our neighbors were a young American couple with two small children about the same age as our son. They were happy to finally have somebody in the street who spoke english. They told us that they were mormons and children sometimes had to follow some (for us) strange rules, but that was it. I had to look up what mormons were I only knew that it was a religion where men could marry several wives and most of them lived in Utah. Our neighbor only had one, apparently she was expensive enough.

After 2 years they had to go back home because he had finished his work for his company in Brussels. We all were very sad when they left and promised to stay in contact.

Now the house was empty and the next day our 4 year old son was sitting with a little friend on the terrace, looking at magazines. I found that a little strange because they giggled and laughed and apparently had a lot of fun. I had a closer look and to my big surprise they had a bunch of porn magazines laying besides them and were giggling at the pictures ! Not Playboy, no, real hard porn, I had never seen that. I gathered my spirits when they told me laughing that all people in these magazines were naked and looked funny and that they had found the pile in front of the kitchen door of our old neighbors.

I picked up the whole bunch and told them that I have much better books with cute animals and also some cookies with that. Without any protest they gave me the magazines, which I quickly put away gave them a book with pictures of monkeys, cats and dogs and a plate of cookies and fell in the next armchair !

In the evening we laughed and laughed about that and of course Mr. Gattino who loves to talk to everybody informed the whole neighborhood about what happened and they had a good laughter too. We never heard from this couple again !

9 comments:

  1. I love that your son and his friend were so easily bribed with cute books and cookies! If only it were still that easy ;)

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  2. Hehehe, this story made me laugh! I have a Mormon friend and while some of her beliefs strike me as strange, live and let live.

    Love the Christmas theme!

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  3. Ugh! and EW! My father-in-law was a porn addict -- this topic grosses me out! But I LOVE that you handled it just matter-of-factly because that left far LESS of an impression about it with your son & his friend! I wonder how I would have reacted BACK THEN. Today I would be like you were -- but BACK THEN... I'm not sure I would have handled it so well! LOL!

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  4. Oh my gosh what a shock.
    I sure it was best to handle it calmly like it was no big deal, then laugh later..ha.

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  5. You had the best reaction it can be I think. J'ai eu un directeur d'école il y a quelques années qui était adept des livres porno et des films aussi. Et il s'en vantait! enfin! faut de tout pour faire un monde! Je ne savais pas que les mormons étaient polygames! Tant qu'à faire...Y en a qui s'arrangent quand même! Je ne suis pas encore couchée car je viens de récupérer Mélissa dans une party! Je me suis endormie devant le téléthon et maintenant je n'arrive plus à me coucher!

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  6. Jeanette said...
    Gday Gattina, Had a chuckle at your story,, the boys were young and innocent and easy enough to bribe, you handled the situation well.
    My Brother turned Mormon 29years ago,Him and his wife love partying but only drink lemonade and still have a lot of fun.If he walked into your house you would never know he was religious as its there personal lifes..

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  7. Very nicely done, Gattina. At least the boys wouldn't have realised exactly what they were looking at.

    Just goes to show, though, behind closed doors and all that...no matter how religious a face some turn to the world. What a giggle...

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  8. Ha ha ha. What an incident. Yes, you handled it perfectly, making no big deal of it. But what where they thinking, leaving them like that... phew.

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  9. What happened to the porn books? Did you keep them? haha....

    It's not funny if my son were to found those books. I would be very angry.

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