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Well! It looks as though your new neighbors have a doggy! A very alert doggy! A doggy with jaws the size of an important geological formation! In the background, you dimly perceive shapes that might be your new neighbors.

“Hi!” you say. “We’re your new ...”

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“BE QUIET, LAMONT!!” say your new neighbors. It sounds like there might be several of them.

“Anyway,” you say, “we thought we’d stop by and ...”

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“DAMMIT, LAMONT!!” say your new neighbors.

“Well, okay!” you say. “Guess we’d better get back and ...”

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They seem like nice people.

Now that you’ve met the neighbors, it’s time to start locating some of the “necessities of life.” If you have small children, you need to find a Pediatric Group where you can go and sit in the waiting room when your children get their ears infected, which is approximately four times per child per week.

Notice I say “Pediatric Group,” not “Pediatrician.” There are no longer any Lone Ranger-style pediatricians, because it is considered a serious violation of modern medical ethics for a child to see the same doctor twice during the child’s lifetime. This is why you sometimes must wait so long in the waiting room: The Pediatric Group is flying in a new doctor, sometimes from as far away as Malaysia, solely to avoid having your child see a familiar face. This is also why, in selecting a new Pediatric Group, the most important factor is not the doctors, but the person who answers the phone, because you will spend a large portion of your life talking with this person:

PHONE PERSON: Good afternoon, this is Pediatricians Backwards “R” Us; how may we help you?

YOU: Hi, this is Mrs. Evans, and my son, Thad, has been having these kind of strange-shaped bowel movements, and last time this happened we saw Dr. Wexler, and he said if it happened again we should call and ...

PHONE PERSON: Well, of course you realize you can’t see Dr. Wexler ever again.

YOU: Yes, of course, but I was wondering if maybe Dr. Bunderson ...

PHONE PERSON (suspiciously): How do you know Dr. Bunderson? Have you seen him before?

YOU (quickly): No! No! Really! I just heard of him, that’s all. From a friend.

PHONE PERSON: Well, in that case, please hold.

eighteen-minute pause

PHONE PERSON: Dr. Bunderson wants to know what you mean by “strange-shaped.”

YOU: Well, kind of like M & M’s.

PHONE PERSON: Please hold.

twenty-three-minute pause

PHONE PERSON: Plain or peanut?

YOU: Plain. Shall I hold?

PHONE PERSON: Of course.

Forty-nine-minute pause

PHONE PERSON: Dr. Bunderson wants you to bring Thad in and sit in the waiting room for two hours reading books with names like Billy the Bunny Bumps His Nose and listening to children shriek behind closed doors, after which Dr. Bunderson will see you for slightly under a minute and a half and prescribe a medicine that you have to administer anally when your child is sleeping and that costs as much per ounce as a round-trip Concorde ticket to Paris, France.

YOU (gratefully): Thank you.

Important as it is to find a Pediatric Group, it is not the most important task, because it is merely a matter of life and death which means it pales by comparison with the task of ...

Finding Somebody To Fix Your Car

This has become very difficult in recent years, because most gas stations have switched over to being “convenience” stores, meaning that, in addition to gas, they sell food such as bologna sandwiches created right around the time of the Big Bang. But they do not fix cars. You pull into a modern gas station with an actual car problem, and odds are that the cashier, sitting behind the bulletproof glass watching MTV, will have the police come and arrest you for blocking the access of legitimate customers wishing to purchase Slimjims, cheap sunglasses, and TicTac breath mints.

The reason gas stations sell food, of course, is that the supermarkets are busy cashing checks. The supermarkets have to cash checks because the banks are busy mailing unsolicited credit cards to everybody in the Western Hemisphere. The result is that very few people fix cars.

The best way to select a new mechanic is to conduct a little competence test, wherein you deliberately disconnect one spark plug wire from your car’s engine. Then you go around to various gas stations, tell the attendants that you think something is wrong with your engine, and see if they can correctly diagnose the problem.

INCORRECT DIAGNOSIS: “So?”

CORRECT DIAGNOSIS: “Sounds like something is wrong with your, whaddyacallit, engine.”

If you find somebody who gives you the correct diagnosis, you should cling to him the way the remora clings to the shark. If you have a daughter, you should encourage her to marry him.

Selecting A Supermarket

The major things we look for in a supermarket are:

1. A wide selection of browsing material at the checkout counter in the form of People magazine and tabloid-size newspapers with headlines like “BURT REYNOLDS WEDS GIANT UFO CENTIPEDE”

2. A policy whereby people who get in the check-out line clutching large, time-consuming wads of food coupons are actually charged more for their groceries.

3. Very strict enforcement of the ten-item limit in the express lane. Ideally, this enforcement would involve a trap-door. (“Oh? Do I have fourteen items? I didn’t reallllEEEEEEEEEEEEEE)

Joining Local Clubs And Organizations

This is an excellent way for a newcomer like yourself to make friends with many local community leaders, all of whom will want to sell you insurance.

Giving Money To The Local Police Association

We always do this. Whenever they come around, we give them a generous contribution and a cheerful smile, because deep in our souls we have this nagging fear that they write your name down somewhere, and if you did not contribute, it will come back to haunt you:

You: Help! Please send somebody to 465 Magnolia Street immediately!

POLICE DISPATCHER: Would that be the residence of Stanley Johnson, the guy who stiffed the Benevolent Association for six straight years? The guy who always says he’ll send us a check “next week”?

YOU: Yes! Please! A huge insane man is pounding on our door with an axe!

POLICE DISPATCHER: That would be Lester Stubbins. Last year he donated, let’s see here, twenty-five dollars.

YOU: HE’S BREAKING DOWN THE DOOR! HURRY!!

POLICE DISPATCHER: Sure thing. We’ll have a unit there “next week.”