Remember Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched? I'm feelin' a little bit like her these days. I know that I haven't written much lately so the few readers I did have are dropping like flies around here. Sorry about that folks - all that cooking has been keeping me very busy these days. Since leaving my Big Legal Career and working from home the past few years, it's not that I'm at a loss for material, believe me. It's just a time issue really. Besides, it seems that while I do get a lot of material to write about here lately, seems the majority of it has to do with my neighbors, and seems a lot of it is grumpy.
I swear y'all, I am a nice person. I get along with most people. I am compassionate. I have empathy. I have paid it forward. I have performed many random acts of kindness. When a disaster hits, I never miss an opportunity to reach out.
But these people who live by me make me want to spontaneously combust into a string of four-letter words most of the time! I guess it doesn't help when you are at home all the time and you don't get away from them. Ever. And there's always something going on. So.... seems I've become a bit of a Gladys here in my old age. Might as well write about it.
When I was growing up there was a fella who lived on the corner of the street, slightly catty-cornered to our house. He was, I believe, military retired and still sported a crew cut, though his was pretty gray. He was known as "the grouchy old fart" of the neighborhood, because for one, he didn't like the fact that all of us kids would tromp across his pristine front yard taking short cuts, or to retrieve a ball we accidentally kicked over there playing kickball. He also wasn't too fond of all those stray 4th of July bottle rockets that would accidentally pop in his carport over his car when the bottle fell over. I can't imagine what his problem was with all that!
Well, karma will always get ya in the end.
Today I ran off a group of about 6 boys who were, not all that well, throwing, or mostly missing a football in the busy, and narrow street in front of my house. My front yard is small and my house closer to the road than anyone else's house, and these boys who apparently can't catch, wanted to "go long." The football was bouncing all over the place, way up into other people's yards and consequently into other people's cars.
Now, in my defense, none of those boys live anywhere near me. In fact, I know where they live. Up a side street a few houses away. When I went outside and told them, while I wasn't at all opposed to boys tossing a football around, would they please take their football practice elsewhere, like perhaps, down the side street, OVER IN FRONT OF THEIR OWN HOUSES... they balked a bit. One would even say talked back. And then they ignored me. Like I wasn't there.
Two things I've learned I really dislike in my old age. Being disrespected. And being ignored. Especially from children who need to learn how to say "yes, ma'am." So I did what any modern Gladys would do.
I came inside grabbed my iPhone and got it on video. Oddly, they must've suddenly decided they were tired, because when they saw me, they left. And went away. Up the side street. On their own street. But I noticed they weren't throwing a football by their parent's cars.
What? I was just shooting a video of this beautiful day!
Course, yes I do realize that there is no telling what other mischief I'm liable to endure as a result of this pleasant encounter. But, in all fairness. That's only liable to make me even more grumpy.
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