Scarlett O'Hara On Prozac

Living Next Door To The Devil

Right now, I am probably more pissed off than any one woman has the right to be. You know, I deal with people who are stubborn, stupid, and convinced they are right every single day. For some reason, the community I work in is riddled with these folks. (For an example of what I mean, watch "The Music Man." More on that in the next post.) But the town I live in is a bit different. Oh, sure, there are those who like to piss and moan about how much their life sucks but you get that everywhere you go. For the most part, everyone here is friendly, they smile at you in the grocery store, talk to you when you wait in line, and act like they care about someone other than themselves. I like that, because its what I'm used to. Once you get past those annoying accents, and the fact that most people here are in a hurry, you find the people to be about like people anywhere: some good and some bad.

But oh! Our next door neighbors have made me so mad I could chew nails and spit tacks. Before I moved up here, my husband and his neighbor had a reciprocal arrangement where one could use the other's driveway if they needed to. There's just a thin strip of gravel separating one from the other, so sometimes when my car was parked behind my husband's, he could back past me onto the neighbor's driveway and then back out to the road. (Houses here are built close together and sit closer to the road than I'm used to.)

So, for the past six or seven years, my husband's been driving over short bits of his driveway when turning into or backing out of our property. Nobody every complained. But Saturday, when I had to back out on his driveway because Scott was parked behind me, the guy comes over and starts bitching Scott out, telling him we're damaging his driveway every time we do that because the gravel chips away pieces of the cement, and that we almost hit his house once and he doesn't want us to cross his property again. His demeanor was most unpleasant. He told my husband, and these are his exact words, that if he could afford to he would "move and put the nastiest nigger he could find in his place."

When my husband told me this, I went cold with rage and he had to restrain me from marching over to this man's house and shoving a piece of my mind right up his alimentary canal. How dare he! How dare this angry, bitter, self-centered person come to my house and speak like that! (Okay, its our house, but I took it personally.)

I hate that word. You know the one I'm talking about. The 'n' word. It embodies every racist thought and deed every conceived in the hearts of men. I don't allow my children to use it, and I don't like hearing it. Its been my personal experience that some of the nicest, well-mannered, considerate, and diginifed people in the world are people of color. I've worked in black neighborhoods, and I would rather work there than where I'm working now. There's really no way I can explain this that won't sound like a white woman talking about black people, but since that what I am, I hope I will be excused. When I worked in black neighborhoods, I was treated with dignity, respect, honesty, and kindness. People minded their manners and spoke with pride, as if they had no doubt of their own worthiness as human beings and phooey on anyone who thought otherwise. The white neighborhoods I worked in...well, lets just say they were different.

I do my very best to be color blind. Of course, we all have our prejudices. Its human nature. We all tend to see things through the narrow scope of both our raising and our experiences. But dammit, we are all human beings. Each person I meet is just that...a person. So when this guy comes over to my house and starts spouting his racist claptrap it makes me shootin' mad. This is the twenty-first century, for Chrissake, and the last time I checked... all men were created equal.

But, I was on my way to work and the US Mail waits for no man, racist idiot or not. So now, I don't know whether to let my husband handle it his way, which is to ignore the buggar and let him keep his opinions to himself, or if I should take the opportunity to slide a bit of Southern Woman Vengeance his way.

I can't be certain, but I feel in my gut that this has something to do with me and my being here. Scott and his neighbor have no trouble until his wife from Alabama shows up. When I was here visiting this summer, I spent a few afternoons talking to his wife and she seemed a very nice lady. I even made friends with their dog, an Uberprotective miniature doberman who would just as soon eat you alive as look at you. I swear, this dog has one of those collars on that shocks her everytime she barks, and she barks anyway. She sounds like she's strangling on the pain, but it doesn't deter her. Her name is Zena, but we call her Devil Dog because she's just plain evil. She hates everyone and isn't shy about letting you know it. But for a little while last summer, she sat in my lap and nosed my hand for continuous ear-scratches.

Not so now that I'm living here. The wife doesn't even speak to me, doesn't even nod hello, and the damn dog acts like I'm a threat to her position as alpha bitch and she must take me out NOW. It might be because the dog senses I deliver mail and it must kill, kill, kill. But I think its because racist asshole has something against living next door to someone from Alabama. I can't prove it, but I know I'm right.

Which leaves me wondering if I should keep my mouth shut and embark upon a subtle but effective manipulation that would ensure this man moves within the year, or if I should just march right over, look him straight in the eye, and say, "Listen, buddy, if you ever come to my house and use that word again there will be trouble. You can keep your racist mouth shut around me and my children, and you can stick your opinions where it will cause you the most discomfort. And as for you moving out and putting in someone you deem undesirable, I can assure you that the nastiest person of any race, creed, or color would be a better neighbor than you are."

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to stich together a rebel flag for the top of the house.

posted by Zoe Richardson @ 10:27 PM