I wished I could have made myself not care, say to hell with the idiots who sat scrutinizing other people’s gardens, this feeble-minded bunch of wrinkled old folk with sagging skin who were unable to think about anything except what was right and fair and spent their remaining years and days, replete with all the experience a long and unique life had given them, keeping a lawn manicured and foaming with indignation when others did not. I wished I didn’t care about them, but I did. The truth was that I feared them and really wanted to make peace with them.
