Reason #26 not to be a douchey neighbor: chances are that
one of your neighbors has a blog and will talk smack about you on the Internet.
Twice.
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| Spring cleaning item #1: remove all Halloween decorations |
Our neighbors across the street insist on keeping their
Halloween pumpkin on their porch for months. Last year, they finally kicked the rotting pumpkin to curb after SIX
MONTHS on March 21st. And, yes, I am aware that remembering the
exact date the neighbors removed their pumpkin from their porch (without even
having to look up last year’s blog post) says a lot more about me than it does about
them. The irony is not lost on me. Hence, this post.
This year, the douches across the street decided to beat
their record and kept the Halloween ornament on display for the whole
neighborhood to see until April 13. Yep, they officially have a live, rotting
pumpkin on their porch for more months of the year than they do not have a live,
rotting pumpkin on their porch.
This yearly phenomenon brings many questions to my mind,
such as why can’t they complete the simple task of walking a pumpkin 30 feet to
the curb? Are they doing this on purpose just to annoy people? Is this some bizarre
social experiment only they know about? Or are they just super lazy? Do they
have some weird fascination with pumpkins? But we all know the real question
here is… why do I care?
Yes, home ownership has turned me into a real Gladys Kravitz, and I’m not proud of this. Okay, that’s an
exaggeration. I don’t actually spy on my neighbors, but it’s really hard not to notice a GIGANTIC pumpkin sitting
directly across the street from your house for six months. And when your house
is this close to other people’s houses, you really hope those other people aren’t
crazy.
Plus, it bugs me when people bring down the aesthetic appeal
of our neighborhood. It’s a nice, simple, middle class neighborhood in suburbia.
It’s nothing fancy. There are no mansions for passersby to gawk at, but it’s cute.
I like seeing all the manicured lawns and picket fences and flower boxes as I push Q's stroller down the street.
So the guy down the road who kept an 8’x8’ storage box
in his driveway for a year really irritated me. And around the corner, there
are three houses in a row whose front yards are permanently littered with more
toys than a daycare center. And one guy pulled up is lawn several months ago,
put down new soil, put chicken wire all around it… and left it like that.
Seriously, plant some damn grass seed before my kid cuts himself on your ugly
chicken wire fence!
I know I sound like a judgmental crazy person, and I wish I
weren’t so bothered by these little things. But every time I pass by the house
that leaves its trash bins by road all week every week, I feel the value of my
home falling faster than a drunk sorority girl. And when you have a big-ass Silicon
Valley-sized mortgage on your tiny, suburban house, that’s enough to make you lose some
sleep.
So I try to focus on my 2013 theme word. Whenever I start to feel annoyed by the few residents who
bring the rest of the neighborhood down, I try to remember to give them the
benefit of the doubt. Maybe an elderly couple lives in that house with the patchy lawn, and they can’t keep up
with the yard work. Maybe the family with the storage box ran out of money mid-remodel, which would be understandable
in this economy. Maybe when you work seventy hours a week so you can afford your
little suburban house, the last thing you care about is hauling in the garbage
bins or throwing away a pumpkin. I’m trying to choose not to be so hard on people. Otherwise, the douchey neighbor
would be me.
But I’m so glad that damn pumpkin is gone, I want to go to a
happy dance on their porch in its place.
(I know today is Wednesday,
and this post is supposed to be Not-So-Wordy, but you know how much I like my
rants, and this one just couldn’t wait until Thursday.)
