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Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself, Unless You Live on My Street

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People on my street have been acting very un-neighborly lately. It started some time ago when someone’s dog decided the walkway leading up to my door would make a nice spot indeed for doing its business, and its owner also agreed with it, leaving the poo swirl as it was, decorating the cement. But maybe the owner forgot to bring a bag or maybe he had a lot on his mind and didn’t notice. Whatever it was, I let it go and eventually learned to walk around the poo pile.

Last week, neighborhood relations got worse, as only relations can when they involve motorized vehicles and the questionable people who drive them. On my way to work one morning last week, I hadn’t even made it out of my street when a red Jetta pulled out of a driveway and nearly crashed into my passenger door. If my memory doesn’t fail me, I believe she was also talking on her cell phone like a good driver ought to. I should have honked, but when I didn’t, I found that at the very least I wanted to give her a nasty stare, but she stalled behind me for so long, I figured she realized cell phones, idiots and red Jettas are never a good combination on her very own.

A few days later, I walked out to my car and noticed a citation officer giving me a ticket. In the hopes that maybe he was writing up the person behind me, I slid past him and almost made it safely into my car when he came up to me. When he said “You’re blocking this man’s driveway,” there was no denying the fact that he was in fact talking to me. I looked at him, looked at my neighbor of three doors down who was standing, but not looking at me, on the sidewalk, and then looked at my car “blocking” his driveway. As intelligently as I could, I said that I didn’t think I was blocking his driveway. The citation officer said “You’re a foot into his driveway.” I wanted to say – oh so badly I wanted to say – “Yea, but he has another 15 feet of driveway and it’s not like he has very many customers anyway driving into his driveway, so I really don’t see what the problem is.”

I also wanted to tell him that last night I had come home from a very long day of work (just trying to keep my job at the factory I was!) and after a long yoga session after that, all I wanted to do was park my car, get in my house and proceed to melt into the couch, but as luck would have it, there was no street parking available that night except for this rinky dink spot that I made work for all intents and purposes. But thinking that less is sometimes more, I kept that to myself and made a gurgly noise that indicated I could understand where the citation cop was coming from but at the same time said I was not necessarily accepting fault. As if he didn’t hear my gurgly noise, the citation cop repeated, “You’re a foot into his driveway, so this man has the right to call me and have me give you a citation.” Now let me be clear about this that the ticket police never come down my street. This crappy neighbor of mine went out of his way to look up the ticket police’s number and had the nerve to ruin their breakfast and demand someone come over bright and early. Luckily, I think the citation man was more annoyed at being summoned here than he was at me for sticking a measly few inches into someone else’s driveway, so he let me off the hook.

This afternoon, an almost identical incident to the red Jetta lady happened, except this time a lady pulled out of a driveway right in front of me, so fast that I had to slam on my brakes to keep from crashing into her. I forgot to honk again, but this time I remembered to give her a dirty, dirty look. This would have been very satisfying, except for the fact that when I went to give her my death stare time slowed to a stand-still and instead of being shaken and frightened to the core like Red Jetta lady, this lady smiled at me. Do you know what that’s like to have someone smile at you when you are trying to give them a much deserved death stare?

Needless to say, I came home and immediately started looking for dogs to adopt that could start leaving huge piles of odorous, brown presents on doorsteps for all my neighbors driving red Jettas, red Accords or owning desolate and sad looking amplification stores.

Last modified: January 10, 2019