First-Person Narrator

I woke up a little earlier than I had planned to, this morning, because some of the kids from the charter school next door were sitting in the alley across from my house and shouting at each other. I put on my robe, stepped out onto the porch, said something cranky, and then went to take my shower. While I was in the shower, I pondered Action.

Because, you know, I don't think this noisy kid situation is gonna get better on its own. Yesterday morning, they weren't content to sit across from my porch - they were on my porch. And you'd better believe I yelled at them, then. So the fact that they were back, and only five feet away from where they'd been before, doing the same noisy things...

So after I got dressed, I walked over, and had a chat with the co-director of the school. I pointed out to him that there are some liability issues - these kids run into traffic, guys. They are completely unsupervised in the mornings and afternoons - and some noise issues, and suggested that having an adult from the school standing around outside during the non-school times when the kids congregate would probably be enough to curtail the bad behaviors. I don't think the kids themselves are bad kids - they're just doing what preteens do when no one's keeping an eye on them.

After my chat with the co-director, I went in to work, only about an hour late!

And immediately got a call from the guy who is installing new windows, back at home, asking if I could come and let him in.

I wonder if I'm gonna get anything done at my actual job today?

I have become the crotchety “hey you kids get off my lawn!” guy.

There’s a charter school in the warehouse/party space/bane of my existence thing across the alley from my little house, now. The kids from it often go and sit on my parents’ front wall in the afternoons, presumably after school lets out and before their parents come to collect them. I can often hear them clearly at my house as they get up to rowdy kid shenanigans, but it’s even worse over here at Mom and Dad’s. They sit out there for almost an hour, sometimes, and it can be maddening to try to get anything done during that time. The noise is impressive. Last Friday, I thought about telling them to go away, but didn’t. Today, one or more of them amused her/himself by shouting obscenities for several minutes without cease. It was, not surprisingly, especially difficult to concentrate on writing through that.

So I stepped out on the porch, barefoot and in old jeans and a t-shirt, hair in a messy knot at the back of my head, glasses no doubt askew, and shouted:

“Hey! If you kids are going to shout obscenities at the top of your lungs, you need to GET OFF MY WALL!”
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I have little magnetic flames on the side of my car. I joked, back when I first got the Corolla, that it'd be funny to paint flames on it, because it's such a conservative, boring-looking vehicle. My dad thought it was a funny idea, and he gave me these magnetic flame decals for a highschool graduation gift.

When I came out to my car, this morning, to go to work, all of the flames from one side of the car and most of them from the other had been moved onto the hood. It's been raining a lot (Monsoons, ya know?) and my car is dirty. These decals are meant to be applied only to a very clean, freshly waxed surface. I carefully moved the flames back, for now, but they're not sticking as well. I'm going to have to find a way to clean them, clean my car, wax it, and put them back on properly. This is going to cost me money, which makes me angry. It may be "funny" and even "harmless" vandalism, but it's still vandalism. My property has been damaged.

I'm pissed off. I'm sick of people walking by and treating my porch like it's public property. I hate finding beer cans and cigarettes and whatever else a foot away from my front door. It's rude, and it makes me feel, at times, like I'm not entirely safe in my own home, even though I have a security gate. But all of the random abuse and misuse of my porch, I can sort of dismiss as people being stupid. Maybe they don't really realise that it's private property. Maybe it doesn't occur to them how rude their behavior is.

But for someone to deliberately rearrange decorations on my car? I'm a little too busy feeling creeped out at the knowledge that someone was walking around a few inches from my living room window and I didn't notice, right now. In a little while, though, I'm going to be seriously fucking pissed off.

I just got back from a late dinner with Jimmy, Isaac, and Casey. I thought it would be a weird grouping, what with Casey being my seventeen-year-old little-sister figure, and Isaac being my twenty-five-year-old best friend/elder-brother figure, but it was fun and the conversation was really pleasant.

I had, as always, conflicting urges when discussing Casey's love life.

The feminist in me wants to say that "slut" is a term that has no meaning, and that to be promiscuous is not necessarily "bad" or morally wrong, as long as everyone you're involved with knows what's up. The older-sister figure part of me wants to say, hypocritically, that sex is for legal adults, damnit, and so is kissing! And hand-holding! In fact, don't even look at boys!

I usually end up saying that I trust her to make good decisions (which I do, even though I sometimes wish I could make them for her), and then just trying to be as honest and open as I can as we talk. I think it's prolly the best thing. I'm terrified of what it'll be like when I've got kids of my own around that age.

Anyway, when Jimmy and I got back to the house, there was something going on next door. A something involving loud music. I was already bracing myself for something like a repeat of the distraught girls in the yard during Gay Prom, when a couple people came running up to talk to us before we got in the house. They turned out to be some of the organizers, and one of them (I believe she said her name was Laura) chatted with me for several minutes about the noise levels, and crowd control, etc. She was really polite, really solicitous, and generally concerned about making sure that they wouldn't be a nuisance. It was such a nice experience, and the first time anyone organizing an event next door has shown the least bit of concern.

It's been a lovely evening. I had a great time over dinner with three people I really care about. A really polite stranger expressed genuine concern for my comfort. It's been raining off and on all day. *happy sigh* I just really wanna hug people right now, y'know?

Jameson answered the door this morning to a pair of very polite Mormon missionaries. It was a bit startling to me, as usually when the Mormons come around, they're looking for my mother. I was also a bit startled because, under their cute missionary uniforms (short-sleeved white button-ups, dark slacks, sensible dress shoes, and plain black satchels... You can spot 'em a mile away), they were both rather dark-skinned. I'm so used to blond missionaries, it boggled me a bit to consider that this pair might actually be local.

Anyway, they talked to Jameson, not me. He engaged in polite handshaking and introductions with them, but said rather firmly that he wasn't interested in converting, and they went on their way.

It seems that today is Save the Unbelievers Day, however. I just ran next door to get my dobak before teaching my afternoon class, and when I came back there was a minivan full of Jehovah's Witnesses parked in front of my house. I used to have one in particular that visited me, Abby, I believe her name was, that I was quite friendly with. She brought me a copy of The Watchtower pretty much every month, and then I'd invite her in and we'd have a pleasant conversation about how I really am pretty content to be an agnostic. It turns out that my interest in biblical literature makes it really hard for me to say "no, I'm not interested in hearing your favorite passage from the Bible, actually," which means that I can never really be convincing enough to get the Jehovah's Witnesses to cross me off their list, or whatever. Abby has apparently moved on, but I've had two visits from a new woman, now, who conveniently enough keeps managing to come by when I'm about to leave to go somewhere else, which makes it a bit easier to turn her away.

I've got to start getting tougher with these well-intentioned religious folks, though. Perhaps I should adopt my friend Uri's protestation that I'm a -militant- agnostic: "I don't know whether or not God exists, and NEITHER DO YOU!"

I'm a bit worried about who might be on my porch waiting for me when I get home from class... Do the Catholics send people around?