Sighing, I said, “Who knows? We must have some seriously bad karma.”

Over the years, we have had numerous conversations about our predilection for attracting neighborhood stalkers. You know, the kind of neighbor that stops whatever he or she is doing in their backyard to listen intently to round two of our “Where did we go wrong?” argument about our oldest son or round 9,999 of “Your mother said that? What was she thinking?”

Our neighbor is such a stalker. His life must be colossally boring because he is endlessly fascinated by ours. My poor husband, Mike, tries to mow the lawn when the guy is at work so he can avoid any contact.

The man, Sam, is like fly paper. Once he comes over, he sticks around until you ask him to leave. One Saturday afternoon, Sam invited himself over. The idiot actually told Mike and me that he planned on killing his wife. My husband’s eyes just about turned into marbles and rolled out of his head right onto our driveway. My response went something like this:

“Sam, I hope you realize that you just made Mike and I accessories to first-degree murder. If anything happens to your wife, I’ll be singing like a canary.” I was eyeball to eyeball with him as I said this, and I’m ashamed to admit that I sort of grabbed the collar of his shirt.

I guess I must have been having some sort of prison flash-back. I guess the implied threat worked because he scuttled away and we didn’t see him for months. We seriously considered becoming hermits, thereby curtailing our neighborhood interaction to a minimum, but that can only last for so long. We do have to eat.

Unfortunately this appears to be a recurring pattern in our lives. Recently, I offered to give my son Anthony’s friend a ride home after school. For some reason, the boy’s mother saw it as carte blanche to use me as her daycare provider of choice and resident therapist. I really do like my son’s friend, so I put up with this. However, I find it odd that absolute strangers feel comfortable in providing me with the intimate details of their lives on very short acquaintance.

With every fiber of my being, I know that I am not the slightest bit interested in hearing about her love life, impending divorce, or her adult-novelty business where she gives “pleasure parties” (I kid you not). At times, I am sorely tempted to ask, “Do you want some cheese with that whine?”

She is in a self-imposed rut and foolishly picks the same man each and every time. I mean they have different faces, but inside THEY ARE THE SAME MAN.

I wish that I had the gumption to just say, “Look honey, maybe this marriage thing isn’t for you and, until you work this out, maybe birth control might be a good idea.”

Cruel, yes. Judgmental, yes. Unfair? I don’t think so. I’m a firm believer in the “you pays your money, you takes your choice” rule of life. Sooner or later, we all have to pay the piper for our foolish mistakes. Your luck is going to run out and your karma bill will come due. But I remain silent because I love my son, and I really do like his little friend.

It seems to me that today people mistake common courtesy for overtures of friendship. As I consider friendship a gift that should be nurtured and cherished, it is not something I offer lightly or casually. This attitude might be antiquated and hopelessly old-fashioned, but my husband and I have followed this creed since the dawn of time. I am no longer that fiery first grader chattering away about my new best friend (back then I changed friends about as often as I changed my underpants). Our generation is the generation that stays (remains constant) and this has filtered into the way we relate to others.

My companions are women that I can have real conversations with on a variety of different topics. If they need me, I’ll be there in a flash as they have often been there for me. There is true history here. We are allies who have weathered both tragedy and beauty. We act as both cheerleaders and consciences. Because there is true love and affection in these tangled webs, we do not take advantage of our good natures or muddy the waters with ulterior motives. In essence, we are a support group (without the bad coffee). To put it in admittedly bluntly obsolete terms: they are my kindred spirits, and I am blessed to have them in my life. And, thankfully, none of them gives pleasure parties.

Kathleen Mary Rowe-Glendon

Kathleen Mary Rowe-Glendon

I’ll admit to being very jaundiced about that particular subject. A prison term will do that. As an inmate, I was an eyewitness to so many concrete examples of violent behavior that cynicism has become my constant companion. There were mass beatings, torture, stabbings, and rapes, just to name a few things. There is certain stillness in a room before a fight breaks out. It’s almost as if the oxygen is sucked out of the room and time virtually stands still. In the dining hall one evening, an inmate threw homemade acid on someone who had made critical comments about her girlfriend. Unfortunately, that woman will be disfigured for life and forever damaged for some idle gossip.

There were the zombie inmates; at least that’s what I called them. I made the mistake of looking one of them in the eye. “Now I know what they mean by "soul-less." I shuddered as if someone walked across my grave. Literally, there was nothing human about those zombie inmates; the humanity was seared out of them long ago. If one met such a person on the street, most of us would cross to the other side, feeling a vague nameless foreboding; our fight-or-flight instinct would kick in immediately.

I am no longer surprised when I see violent women depicted in the media. Meeting these women in person is sobering. They kill, maim, and abuse their children, but they are always innocent, blaming a spouse, drugs, or an abusive background. One woman I met shot her husband 25 times in the face with a shotgun, tried to get acquitted, and repeatedly appealed her conviction because of unproven allegations of spousal abuse, which I feel is the modern-day equivalent of the “Twinkie” defense. The court rightfully decided that the re-loading of the shotgun indicated some sort of intent and, as far as I know, she‘s still there still exhibiting no remorse.

There are many such stories. One of my old roommates attempted to kill her husband by putting Drain-O in his soda can. Obviously, she wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the box because the Drain-O melted the tin can. She tried to blame her actions on being abused also. It turns out that she was angry because the poor man cut off her access to his accounts because she was spending all of their money on methamphetamine. Again, no remorse for almost killing the poor man, not to mention the psychological damage she caused their children.

It is unfortunate that the domestic violence defense is so abused because there are many women who suffer daily from this epidemic, living almost a concentration camp existence. The prison term opened my eyes as there are many who would take something that has validity and twist it to suit their own advantage.

The soldier mentioned in my first paragraph also had “zombie” eyes as she turned her grinning face to the camera leaning over some tortured soul’s corpse and, even after being punished, still exhibits no remorse.

Video games, television, rap music, advertising has all contributed to our becoming the deadlier of the species. There is a new Quentin Tarantino movie being advertised that shows a comely woman in a short skirt with a machine gun for a leg. Typical movie — random violence, carnage, and death ensue; violence for violence's sake. I know I don’t want my children to see that garbage.

I spent almost two years of my life in a dog-eat-dog environment. I am saddened at my own battle with desensitization and am in constant mourning for my lost innocence. I hope one day to lose “my prison face” and regain my Pollyanna attitude.

Kathleen Mary Rowe-Glendon