Just Jo

In Ohio, a man came to install my internet. He asked what I wanted to name the network. I said the network already has a name. It is printed on the box. He said, "Nobody keeps that." He turned his tablet around and showed me every network the house could see. Eleven of them. My neighbors. FBI SURVEILLANCE VAN 4 PRETTY FLY FOR A WIFI TELL MY WIFI LOVE HER NO THIS IS PATRICK IT BURNS WHEN IP I asked which house was which. "No idea." I asked whether the neighbors know who is who. He shrugged. "Probably not." Then he said the thing that finished me. "It's just there." Every house on this street is telling a joke. The joke has been running for years. It plays to anyone who walks past holding a phone. Nobody signs it. Nobody is standing at the window to see whether it landed. A jest performed in an empty field, with no expectation of laughter, is the most disciplined act I have witnessed in this country. He asked me again what I wanted. I did not have a joke. I had a fear of dishonoring the street. I named it THE HOUSE OF THE CAREFUL FLAME. He typed it in with no expression whatsoever and said, "That's a good one." He did not ask what it meant. He did not ask why a man would name a router after a fire he is watching. He plugged it in, it went out over the fence into the air, and that was the entire ceremony. Three days later the network across the street changed to THE HOUSE OF THE SLIGHTLY BURNT CHICKEN. I have no proof it was aimed at me. I have never spoken to that house. I checked every morning for a week. I am not going to pretend I was not checking. Four days after that, the corner became HOUSE OF THE MISSING LID. In May there was a stretch I would rather not put down here. I stopped opening the blinds. On the Sunday, a network appeared that had never been there before. CAREFUL FLAME IT'S FINE COME OUT I went out. A man two doors down was standing in his driveway holding a hose he was not using. He said, "Hey." That was the whole conversation. At the cookout in August a woman I had never met pointed at me with a paper plate. "You're the flame guy." Her husband said, "Chicken guy's out back." I have lived here one year. I do not know the last names of four of my neighbors. I know all four of their routers. They know mine.