But, one might say, life is never normal when one's neighbors are not. Normal and life are two words whose meanings are open to different interpretations. Any interpretation is valid. Including my neighbors'.

Yes, the dysfunctional family next door is rather weird. You know my neighbors. They are the ones who ask if a megabyte comes with french fries. They think bit is the future tense of byte. They have developed an interesting habit lately. Every day they drop their groceries in the driveway and run over them. The meaning of this ritual I do not yet understand. I have little more to say about my neighbors.

The boy next door comes over now and then. In this essay, I will call him Bubba. His family has more than a thousand names for him, and I do not know what his real name is. He's a plump little boy with a friendly disposition.

***

Upon salvaging the contents of my crashed hard drive, I find I have lost the final draft of this essay, and only have this incomplete version...

Alas, I am not going to finish it yet again. However, I feel that the three paragraphs I have published are worthy of being read by a wider audience than myself; therefore, I have submitted this to the editors of Bewildering Stories. If you are reading this and you are not an editor of Bewildering Stories, then this piece is obviously published, isn't it?

But I digress. The point is, what's unfinished is still quite bewildering. Perhaps that makes sense; then again, it might not. Then again, what does?