In order to keep conversations moving (and save face), I sometimes mumble, “Sort of” when someone queries, “You know where ol’ (fill-in-the-blank) lives, don’t you?”
Around these parts, it’s a major social faux pas if you don’t know some nodding acquaintance’s street address, the Vehicle Identification Number of their conveyance and their middle child’s school locker combination.
In this part of the country, “I know where you live” is a nonnegotiable prerequisite for good citizenship, unlike in the movies, where “I know where you live” is a veiled threat (such as “This isn’t over yet” or “I just happen to have a slow-motion video of my granddaughter’s cymbals solo.”)
The obsession with precise locations is even drummed into (most of) our heads in the educational system. It’s not unusual for a report card to indicate, “Plays well with others – and can draw an exact reproduction of the blueprint of their lodgings.”
It’s not just public schools. In Sunday school, young worshippers are taught, “In my Father’s house are many mansions – and if you can’t differentiate each of those mansions, there’s a warmer final destination waiting for you!”
Granted, I used to be more “in the know” about the habitation of local “characters” and “big wheels.” My late father was a realtor when I was in grade school. I helped dad and the Kiwanis Club go door-to-door selling peanuts. The family used to take leisurely Sunday afternoon drives through various neighborhoods.
My mother loved adding bonus residential information on those Sunday jaunts. (“This is where Mrs. Hufnagel lives. You know her mother is in the insane asylum, don’t you? And her homosexual first husband lives at the end of Maple Street. You knew she had had been married before, didn’t you? And she’s such a gossip!”)
Right now, I could drive straight to the domicile of only a handful of my co-workers, church brethren or classmates. I hope the excluded majority aren’t losing any sleep over my ignorance, because I wouldn’t know where to drop off the Vicks ZzzQuil if they needed me to run by the pharmacy for them.
I’m sure I would have a better grasp of residences if I was a big party-goer. But I am less of a social butterfly than a social dodo bird.
Mail carriers, pizza delivery drivers and utility workers have a legitimate reason for knowing where people live; but my brain will hold only so much information, and it had better be essential. Frankly, “righty tighty, lefty loosey” and “There is no ‘I’ in team” come in more handy than knowing where my third cousin’s podiatrist’s stepson hangs his hat.
I know I’m supposed to have a photographic recollection of the Smith family’s topiary, picket fence and back stairs; but unless George Clooney and Brad Pitt invite me to participate in another Ocean’s 11 caper, I’m not seeing the benefit.
Some folks have strange priorities. They can be blissfully ignorant that their own home is built atop a toxic waste dump or haunted Native American burial ground as long as they know that Everett Everyman’s stepsister lives two doors down from where the old livery stable burned down in “nineteen-ought-seventy-three.”
Do I know where you live? Probably not. But as long as your newspaper gets delivered, I’m good.
“Plays well with others – remotely.” That’s me!

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at tyreetyrades@aol.com and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”