Confessions of a Cereal Spiller

Remember Boo Radely, in To Kill a Mockingbird? That house he lived in, on the corner - the one they stayed away from because crazy people lived there - - Every neighborhood has one. They're typically on the corner, sometimes a woman lives there with several cats. You know the ones.

I've just discovered how those places come to be.

See, my house is on a corner lot. It's a cute little house, with an old, decorative metal fence all around. On the left, along the road, there's a tall, thick hedge running the entire length of the property, giving me privacy on that side. In the back, an alley runs down linking that side road to another side road at the end of the block. That's how I get to my garage, which isn't attached to the house. On my right are two houses, they're rentals that butt-up against each other, so that one house has it's front on our front, and the other house's front is at our rear. I have a really nice, tall wood fence between me and them.

Out front, my house sits back from the road, so there's a nice paved walkway from the front porch out to the street. There you exit through an old metal gate and you're standing on what is considered my driveway. This gravel strip runs the length of the street, and it's where residents park their cars if they don't have a driveway or garage out front.

My mailbox is there.

I have the coolest system ! When I get off work, I drive home, arriving there just after 4pm. If I take this one route it brings me to the front of the house, where I can drive up to my mailbox, open my window, get the key, and get my mail without even turning off the car. Then I drive around on the other road, enter the alley and drive into my garage. That way I get the mail every day, no muss, no fuss, park in the garage and walk to the house using the back door to the mud room.

School's in.

Cue ominous music.

That would mean nothing to me, being without children, if it weren't for Polly Purewater and her Gaggle of Mom's who PARK RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE to pick up little Johnny No-Good and Pollyanna-Sue as the school bus disgorges them.

Yeah, that's right. This school bus, the one that stops on EVERY BLOCK to dump kids out so the brats have no more than a 30-foot walk from drop-off to front-door, stops directly in front of my house.

Okay, I can deal with that. Once a day, during the school year, this behemoth of smoke and noise stops in front of my house, blocking out the sun and the mailman, sits there for a few minutes, then trudges down the road. Once or twice it has arrived as I'm sitting there in my car pulling the mail out of the box, blocking me, the daylight and most of the oxygen in the County, forcing me to wait until it pulls away.

What I can't deal with are Polly Purewater and her Gaggle of Mom's ! They sit there, usually for a good 15 minutes in their butt-ugly sedans, blocking my front walkway, blocking my mailbox, blocking my gate - making it IMPOSSIBLE for me to pull up and get the mail - let alone park in what is technically my driveway, or enter my property via the gate!

And you know what's worse? They litter.

It's not bad enough that when I'm weed-wacking the outside of the hedge so my neighbors don't have to stare at lawn flowers growing in a swatch of lawn I can't see - I'm also picking up beer cans and empty cigarette packages. NOW I get the added bonus of picking up after Polly Purewater and her Gaggle of Mom's as they toss their water bottles, granola bar wrappers and 100-calorie packages all over the front of my property !

I've asked them to stop. (i've considered all manner of other methods - including but not limited to: spike strips, broken glass and a pit-bull)

I've asked them to please park and wait for the little shits on the other road, a mere 10 feet away, so they'd be on the other side of the hedge and at least not blocking my house.

I've asked them to please, for the love of Nature itself, take their trash with them when Johnny Jr. and Pollyanna-Sue get off the bus. My garbage can gets set out in the alley, so it's not up front for them to even take advantage of.

Do they?

Nope.

And you know what really kills me? The part that's gonna be the straw required to break this camel's back?

You know the part that will be written out in black ink and bad physician handwriting on that form they show the judge when they're locking me away?

You wanna know what it is?

Mommy-dearest drives her little shitzus one block.

Only one block.

Yeah, you heard me right.

One.

Block.