there goes the neighborhood.

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6 june 1997

1:47 a.m.

Dear diary, Nothing cements a friendship like a common enemy. Mary -- in the midst of a spat with Sean, her husband -- has dragged me out for the last two nights, desperate to do anything to stay away from their apartment. And I mean desperate. Last night we just sat in her car across from my building for two hours. We spent the first hour trying to come up with something interesting to do, and the second whining about anything that came to mind -- mostly about how there wasn't anything interesting to do. She's upset because she hasn't had morning sickness yet. Something tells me she'll be the kind of mother that considers baby excretia a loving gift. When I finally came in, Derek had left a couple of concerned messages. We talked, with him putting in lots of good words for Sean in the apparent hopes that they'd get back to Mary through me. I figured I'd take the high road, insisting that it's not my place to get involved. I figured Mary'd rather hear things from Sean herself. I figured I'd end up meddling anyway, but I might as well put up a good fight. Instead, her first question when she called tonight was, "Did Derek tell you what he and Sean talked about?" Derek eventually confessed that he too was enlisted as an information resource agent, expected to weasel tidbits out of me to relay back to Sean. Funny, the way people work. Of course, the easiest way out of the fix would be for Derek and I to join forces. Tell our respective clients that the other is really, terribly sorry and wants to take a trip to, say, Maui to make up. On the other hand, it's kind of fun to watch the guys squirm. Well, it happened sooner rather than later. CNN's human interest story of the day heralded "the newest toy craze -- Tamagotchi!" I can see it now. Kids will start stealing mom's jewelry to buy them. School boards will ban them. Next thing you know, "Say No to Tamago!" T-shirts will be rolling out of novelty stores and Dateline NBC will uncover a tie to Timothy McVeigh. (And for the record, it's a long "o" sound in there, not "ah." Tamago is the Japanese word for "egg.") Speaking of which, mine's not dead yet. The first morning, I broke down and fed it. Frankly, I was just curious about how it'd be done. Three buttons later, it was munching away. Figuring I'd unload it at work -- preferably at a Hawai`i premium -- I unstuck it from my fridge and hid it at the very bottom of my purse. The expected crowd gathered the minute I pulled it out in the office, and I gladly passed it around. By the time I got it back, it had been gamed-out and stuffed silly. It was the happiest little demonspawn I ever had the pleasure of taking home. The next day, more of the same. It had made it to an entirely different ward before I tracked it down (oddly enough, it was the biggest hit among the 40-something crowd). Four ounces heavier and with no buyers, it slept in Waikiki. Again. I think the way the rest of the story goes is pretty obvious. My sense of pity may be properly lacking, but I underestimated the active interest of my coworkers. They're trying to settle on a name, for chrissakes. I wonder if there's a market in Tamogotchi Day Care?