While they still cannot compete with Dogette’s Neighborhood of Awesome Moronity, our own Garage People continue to be sources of utter fucking confusion for us. Last time we spoke there were two notable Garage-dwelling households in our neighborhood: the Trailerians and the Hoodtowners. While Hoodtown Ricer Boy still goes through a clutch a week backing that shit into the garage, the Trailerians have far outstripped their rivals in the Sheer Fucking Creepy Department.
For starters, that garage door is open all the time. All. The. Time. I’ll have to check with MLG, who regularly steps out on the front veranda to burn one before bedtime, but the damned thing might just stay open all night.
Most of the time they’re sitting in the garage – “they” being however many adults in the apparently extensive clan that actually live there are home at the moment – on what appears to be the bench seat from a van. No, not a spare sofa. Not lawn chairs. An old seat ripped out of a VAN. (Which I presume is still parked down by the river.)
And they STARE. Step out of your house to get the mail, they STARE. Leave to do errands, they STARE. Go out to do anything at all during which you have the expectation of NOT FUCKING BEING STARED AT, and they STARE. Until you look at them, anyway. Then they look away.
I’ve begun to make it a specific point to bring Liberty Dog out with me to get the mail. He’s large, red, and when he gives you the prick-eared look, your colon tries to tie itself in granny knots. They don’t know he’s a big lapdog who’d rather eat ice cubes than bite miscreants, and we’re sure as fuck not telling them.
I also regularly allow my t-shirt to ride up when putting things into the car, thereby strategically exposing my belt-holstered PPK. Yes, losers, I have a dog, a gun and an attitude. YOU CAN STOP STARING NOW.
As I was writing this someone knocked on our front door. I scoped him out using our super-large door viewer (get you one-a these, people), then yanked the door open and gave him the fuckeye. He stepped back (as I meant him to), then girded his loins and sallied into his pitch. Apparently he is a neighbor, just bought a house the street over, and is affianced to some chick. They’re trying to do a beautiful beach wedding without mortgaging the future offspring and said they’d been admiring our Xmas lights, wanted to know if they could borrow them for the ceremony.
I honestly don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I said yes. Maybe it’s because the Liberty Kids are still off at Grandma’s house, I’m feeling kind of vulnerable and at loose ends. Or maybe I just remembered how we did our own wedding on the cheap, albeit gorgeously. Or maybe it’s nice to have a neighbor who would ask to borrow the lights instead of just nicking them in the dead of night.
I hate it when I discover I’m not pure evil, like that time I did NOT swerve to puddle-splash the guy in the wheelchair. But that’s another story.
)
I have a garage neighbor, too. She’s very nice, but they have a huge extended family of non-family types, just stray people they adopt.
She knows absolutely everybody’s business… but mine. I like to keep her close, for information purposes.
Joan of Argghh!
December 30th, 2008
My boss think im evil. Cause i want muslim terrorist dead.
Brad essex
December 30th, 2008
@Joan of Argghh!: Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
~Sun Tzu
Liberty Girl
December 30th, 2008
Wait, you’re not pure evil? What’s next? Finding out that your favorite gun shoots .22LR and has pink grip panels? That your dog is really a mini-poodle?
Probably not, and I guess that you’re allowed to have compassion here and there.
Oh, and a friend of mine bought one of those pink 22s and he helps his 4yo daughter shoot it. She’s also been duck hunting (an observer, not a hunter) with us and she goes to the range with us for pistol matches.
She really likes the pink grips. She’s such a girly girl.
folly
December 30th, 2008
“…then yanked the door open and gave him the fuckeye.”
Maybe its not a problem where you live, but I’m hearing more and more stories on the news about home invasions recently. Seems like every week there’s another incident. Women, men, old people – all of them getting beaten/stabbed/whatever.
I installed a “peephole” in our front door, but it took me forever to break my wife of opening the door for someone she doesn’t know.
If a thug wanted to break into our house, while he’s busy with the steel door and deadbolt she’d have time to fetch a gun and deal with him…. unless of course he just rings the doorbell. In that case she would happily open said door and say HI
If you look through the viewer and you don’t know the visitor, and aren’t expect company:
Don’t. open. the. door.
It’s like having caller id, seeing that its NOT someone you want to talk to, and then answering the phone anyway.
Paladin
December 31st, 2008
@Paladin:
MLG did ask me if I took my gun to the door, gave ME the fuckeye when I said ‘not that time.’ I never open the door for salespeople, hell, I even wait for UPS to leave before retrieving packages. Considering this little fuck did not come back for the lights last night when MLG was home, as he said he would, I will be answering the door today in the Modified Weaver stance.
Liberty Girl
December 31st, 2008
“That garage door is open all the time. All. The. Time.”
YES. We have that here too. WTF is it with the garage-door-always-open people? I really really don’t get it. Our nabes do the same thing. It’s like they’re announcing that they’re “open for bidness” every morning when the door goes up. Attention passing thieves and vandals: We have a garage full of STUFF. And the door doesn’t close ’til after dark most nights. Another “crime of opportunity” just waiting to happen, if you ask me and as usual no one has but fuck it.
dogette
December 31st, 2008
@folly: I know, I’m an embarrassment.
My favorite gun is a 30+ year old Marlin .30-.30. Beautiful wood stock, leather sling, and can shoot the eye out of a flea at 50 paces. Ok, I made that last part up but only because I wouldn’t be able to SEE the flea’s eye. We used it this summer to dismantle watermelons for the amusement (and edification) of the children – there were no parts larger than a half dollar left.
Little girls do get over the pink obsession eventually. Liberty Daughter – now 9 – insists on tactical black.
Liberty Girl
December 31st, 2008
Gawd, I miss being back in Alberta where my closest neighbor was 4 miles away as the crow flies, 7 by road …
we’re out in the country here … but all the friggin’ farmers are selling off the roadfront properties and it’s starting to get damned crowded. Not enough yet that I have to worry about garage people … but … I sure hope things pick up economically soon so that I can get back to thinking retirement and MOVING AWAY from Michigan!!
Oh well, at least I don’t have to worry about answering the door with a .357 tucked into the small of my back … yet. Around here the creeps keep to the city, knowing they’re likely to be ventilated out here.
pete in Midland
December 31st, 2008
@pete in Midland:
Here in Florida we have the Castle Doctrine, no tucking away out of sight is necessary. The one thing this state manages to get right.
Liberty Girl
December 31st, 2008
Sounds like a beautiful rifle. I enjoy the older ones more than the new ones. My favorite is a Savage .308 lever action I got from my Dad years and years ago, and it was old when I got it. I still hunt with it.
And yes, they do get over the pink thing. My daughter, now 14, is pretty much past it, but she’s still my sweetie girl. Not much of a shooter though. I need to get a 22-45 so she’ll try it.
In Oklahoma we called it the “make my day” law. If I feel I or my family are being threatened, and I shoot someone in my house or on my property, I am immune to prosecution. It’s sad that we had to pass a law to say that, though.
folly
December 31st, 2008