Get Off My Lawn

by noahvail

People who don’t pick up their dog’s poop need to, quite literally, get off my lawn.

I could end this post there, but allow me a brief anecdote:

For about a year a group of coeds lived next to us. Sounds great in theory but for this curmudgeonly old man, it amounted to loud beer-pong parties broadcasting the din of unbearable frat boys, a complete dearth of on-street parking and, worst of all, a Labrador Retriever.

The dog itself wasn’t the problem (it seldom is) but the fact that his owners left him in the backyard all day and never cleaned up his poop. (Their general treatment of the animal is the subject for another day; this post is about poop.) Walking out our backdoor during the steamy, six-month-long Austin summer, you were immersed in a sauna of fecal stench.

The neighbors moved away, and a new batch of coeds — slightly older, more mature, sans canine — moved in. But the smell remained…and remains to this day.

Long after it seemed possible for any remnant of dog poop to linger in the next-door neighbor’s yard I learned that another neighbor, behind us, was allowing their dogs to poop in our alley and not clean up. DUDES: The alley totally counts! Pick that shit up!

And all of you, whether it’s my lawn or yours, street or alley, pick up after your dog. Or I just might leave my own “present” on your front step.

by FormerlyNicePerson

Dear Neighbor,

I am moving. Somehow, despite your best efforts, we were able to sell our house. But I’m going to do the next owners a service and give you some tips on being a good neighbor.

1. Try a new exterior paint color that does not have the word “electric” in the title.

2. Consider investing in a trash can instead of just throwing your garbage on the side of your house, directly in front of my kitchen window. It’s ever so appetizing to prepare dinner while I watch your used sanitary napkins blow into my yard.

3. Horse trailers are for horses. They don’t belong in the suburbs. They don’t belong in your driveway…I know it may be hard to move them due to the excessive rust build up, but you might just try.

4. The front of this house is not your designated parking lot. The front of YOUR house has ample room…I’ve also noticed you can park a horse trailer and still fit at least 3 cars in your driveway. So…maybe try that? Or, here’s a novel idea–try your garage.

5. Locking your elementary school aged kids outside the house when they get home from school every day without access to food, water or a bathroom is not acceptable. My bathroom is not a public bathroom and though I could not help myself, I really didn’t want to have to fret over your kids every day. Though I did really enjoy how angry you got when I told you that.

6. I wonder if you enjoyed my stunned look when you told me that you were applying to be a principal at the school where you teach.

7. Giving me the CD of your band doesn’t make me want to hear you practice every night. Though you do clearly need to.

8. Most couples find their domestic disputes too embarrassing to do outside. Maybe you could try taking it indoors and see how it works for you.

9. Your kids need attention. Your son shot a real arrow into my backyard. Your daughter clings to me so much that I have to add 10 minutes to any outside activity so I can give her attention. I have my own children. Why don’t you do EVERYONE a favor, put down your guitar, grow up, and invest in your children?

10. Please don’t force me to bite my tongue until it bleeds by asking us why we are moving.

I loved my home until you moved here last year and you have now driven me out of it with your Cousin Eddie-style antics. I hope the people who bought this house make you as miserable as you have made us.

by MyPeeve

I try to do my civic duty in a tiny way. I coordinate the Neighborhood Watch for my neighborhood association. It’s not a big job, but I like to think it helps keep my neighbors informed about occasional crime, bored fuckwit teenagers’ rare tagging in a drainage ditch, lost or stray dogs and cats, whatever.

But it gets really disheartening when I consistently get a long and blathering response from one neighbor in particular. Without fail. Every single time I send out an alert about anything, this bitch has to interject her opinion. Here’s a sample:

Me – “A neighbor reported a burglary on Avenue 9, which occurred approximately midday. It was reported to the police. No other information is available at this time. Please alert your blocks.”

Dumb Ass Neighbor’s response:

Thanks for the info. Before I got this e-mail I called 5 of my neighbors to alert them to the fact that there were two burglaries on Fred Street yesterday. My friend, Lola, on Jennifer Avenue saw it on a web site she looks at all the time called somecrime.com. I haven’t looked at it yet, but I am planning to. She said that they don’t give the exact location of the crimes but that they give you what has happened recently with your zip code information. Thank you again. I will let them know…………again, these are two streets on the outlying areas of the neighborhood……easy on and easy off, as the police officer told us. I think these people like to do this stuff when the weather is good. That’s the ONLY reason I would look forward to the freezing cold weather we are due to have next week. Isn’t today beautiful……..it’s why we live in Texas. My daughter in Pennsylvania has a 2 and 5 year old and she is totally tired of all the snow. We’ll keep a look out.

Really. This is an actual email. I just cut and pasted it. The names have been changed to protect Teh Stupid. But that’s it. Now, for the love of Mike, GET OFF MY LAWN!

by Senorita Crankypants

I live in a suburban cul-de-sac built in the late ‘70s. Once it was shiny and new, full of upwardly-mobile families. Now it’s populated by those of us hanging on to the middle class by our fingernails. Several of the homes on our street are rentals (our house was one for 25 years) and there is one foreclosure, which nicely killed property values for the rest of us.

I’m not here to complain about my neighborhood; I just wanted to describe it because too many people think Desperate Housewives when they hear “suburbs.” Bah. I’m here to complain about my dumb-ass neighbors.

Most of the neighbors my husband and I know are stupid and irritating as hell. They have stupid children, too, and their stupid children play with our smart, sweet children and pick on them in the way that dolts have been picking on brainiacs for years.

Asshat kids. I have a theory that the “glasses=brains” stereotype exists not because there is any correlation between poor eyesight and high intelligence, but because intelligent parents are more likely to take their children to the eye doctor. There aren’t many intelligent parents on our block; thus, our oldest child is the only glasses-wearer among the kids.

The mean, doltish children are a bad influence on our sons, but talking to their parents about it doesn’t help because the parents are either idiots (as previously mentioned) or completely ineffective. The one neighbor I actually enjoy talking to has a 4-year-old who says “fuck” all of the time. She is apparently aware of this, but unable to stop it. Excuse me?

As much as I would love to blame all this on the quality of our neighborhood (i.e. as a white-collar worker I am really too good for our blue-collar street), the fact is that I hate our neighbors because I did not get to select them. If we lived in the city, I’d be bitching about my pseudo-intellectual neighbors who brag about not having a TV and force their children to hand-make all of the birthday presents they give. Asshat urbanites. If we lived in a McMansion surrounded by doctors and lawyers, I’d be bitching about my neighbors’ conspicuous consumption and their overscheduled children in foreign-language-immersion preschools. Asshat snobs.

This is why people build walled compounds in the wilderness: I only want to be surrounded by like-minded adults I hand-select. I don’t want to be the snob on the blue-collar block, the crass suburban transplant in the buy-local, bike-to-work district, or the embarrassment on Housewives Blvd with a ’95 Chevy Blazer rusting in the grass. I want to fit in. I want to respect my neighbors and enjoy their children.

Barring that, I want those snot-nosed, apple-stealing, Kindergarten-repeating bullies and their asshat parents to GET OFF MY LAWN!