Remember the days when you could leave your front door unlocked?
Or walk away from your car confident it would still be there when you exited the store?
Or didn’t have to worry if someone would steal your mail – or if it would even be delivered to you and not your neighbors? (An ongoing problem with us right now).
Remember when people were neighborly? Friendly? Smiled?
I’m not saying our neighbors are jack holes – not at all – we have a lot of really nice neighbors. Kevin has made an effort, through LeRoy, because LeRoy will talk to anyone and everyone, (Kevin’s special-needs uncle), to get to know our neighbors. He can point to practically any house and tell you the names of our neighbors.
I, however, have no idea who lives where or who anyone is. I’m that neighbor – not very neighborly. I’m not rude, I’m never rude for the sake of being rude, (I’m not a KAREN after all – that’s said with tongue-in-cheek and meant as sarcastic), but I don’t go out of my way to get to know anyone, either. I like keeping most people at arm’s length. I’ve always been that way. Not just with neighbors, with co-workers, with family – I’m just a person who likes her space and the freedom to do what she wants, when she wants, without the interruption, (for the lack of a better term), of disrupting my life for someone else.
I know I’m not painting a very flattering picture of myself, but I’m just keeping it real. I’m friendly, funny, helpful and loyal, but on my terms.
But I digress, (as usual).
Everyone, to my limited knowledge, gets along in our neighborhood. Everyone seems to be pretty respectful, keeps their houses/lawns nice, smiles, nods/waves whenever we see each other, but there are always those bad apples.
We have a father/son duo who like noisy cars. It all started with the 16-ish year-old son. At least, he was the first to get my attention. Every day, you could set your watch to it, he would leave for school at 8:20 and come back from school at 3:30. You could hear his car coming for 1/2 mile. He not only has one of those highly annoying muscle car mufflers, but he has some sort of “glass thingie”, I don’t know, Kevin explained it to me but …
::blank stare – shrug::
This thing sort of detonates as the kid lets off the gas. It explodes and pops and it’s super loud. If that weren’t bad enough, in addition to him leaving and coming home from school every day, he also drives up and down our neighborhood multiple times a day so it feels like we hear his car, all. day. long.
We live on a corner lot. So, there is a stop sign at the corner and this punk has to slow down and roll through the stop sign. But that’s okay, you see, because this just gives him an excuse to rev his engine and take off with a roar, a pop and an explosion.
At all hours of the night. I don’t know if the kid is just bored, if he works as a Door Dash delivery guy, or what, but he drives back and forth, back and forth, multiple times a night.
It’s gotten so bad, that some of the younger dads in the neighborhood have confronted the punk’s dad. Kevin, or LeRoy, maybe both, have witnessed these confrontations and they are ugly. Everyone is yelling, cursing and acting all alpha male but the dad simply yells, curses right back at these guys, doesn’t apologize, nothing.
In fact, one day, the punk drove by and a pickup truck, just as loud and obnoxious, was right on his tail. I looked to Kevin and said in a sarcastic tone of voice, “Oh look, the piss-ant made a friend.” Come to find out, it was the piss-ant’s DAD.
What the actual …. ::bleep::
Apple didn’t far too far from that jerk tree, did it.
I’m not mad at the kid, he’s just following in his father’s footsteps, I’m sure good old dad is egging him on. No, it’s dad’s fault. Hands down. For not teaching his kid some manners, some courtesy, some respect.
This roar, pop, explosion, grinding went on for weeks. Neighbors called the cops on him. But the cops couldn’t do anything, he wasn’t breaking a law. I even saw a motorcycle cop hanging out around our corner one day, I think to try and catch this punk rolling through a stop sign or something, but father/son got word there was a cop hanging around and though they were still noisy, the punk didn’t speed through the neighborhood and he stopped at the stop sign. Again, this only helped him because then he would gun his car and make even more noise.
It annoyed me at first, then I got used to it. Whatever. The kid clearly wanted attention, he wasn’t getting it from me.
But we don’t have littles at home. And a lot of my neighbors do. And his driving through the neighborhood at 9:00 at night was waking up those littles.
And the neighbors continued to fume.
Then, one day, as dad was driving down the street, they flagged him down. I don’t know how they flagged him down, did they stand in the street so he couldn’t get around them? Did they pound on his truck so he stopped? I don’t know, but the guy stopped. The neighborhood guys started yelling, cursing at the guy and this time, they showed their concealed weapons.
Oh boy.
I’m all for the 2nd amendment. Everyone has a right to bear arms and protect themselves, however, I feel like the guys were close to crossing a line. I understand their frustration, but getting into a gun fight is not the answer.
I didn’t see any of this. I’m only hearing about this from Kevin who did see it. He was going to get involved, and then thought twice about it, especially after the neighborhood guys started showing off their firearms.
To be clear, the neighborhood guys were not pointing their guns at the dad. They didn’t even take the weapons out of their holsters, but them showing them to dad was a clear message: Stop messing with us.
After that?
Silence.
I guess whatever happened, whatever they said, or didn’t say, got to dad because I haven’t heard a peep out of father/son in over a week. I don’t know if they’re taking a different route, if they removed the noisy muffler thingies from their car or what, but the neighborhood is peaceful once again.
My takeaway?
If you’re a gun owner, don’t go showing it off in a threatening manner to jack holes, I get it, it’s tempting, but don’t open yourself up to a potentially deadly situation – but also – it’s good to have a gun because there ARE jack holes in this world – whether the Kumbaya folks want to admit it or not.
Don’t buy a car with super noisy mufflers. You’re not impressing anyone and everyone hates you. Save your money.
Also – can we teach our children to be respectful, decent human beings? Please? What happened to that? Why do people insist on being jerks? Your children are only reacting, imitating to what they see/hear.
Lead by example, parents.
Seriously.
Write From Karen 