NOTE: It’s getting late, I am incredibly tired from goofing off most of the day watching my plants grow and puttering around the yard, I have a serious headache, and I need a shower before bed. Once again, I am not going to bother proofreading this, so if it sounds insane, it just sounds insane. I’m posting it anyway.

It’s long, so it’s going behind the cut.

Yesterday I pondered my new outlook on the obnoxiousness of people who drive large trucks and take up two spaces in parking lots. Sometimes, a new perspective, from the other side of the fence, does put a whole new spin on the story, and I conceded that not all, likely not even most, of the people who drive large trucks and take up two spaces in parking lots are not, in fact, assholes. Not for parking like crap anyway. Unless they are driving a gas-guzzling monster of a vehicle when they really don’t have to do so … and driving them so poorly while still maintaining what I call the Hummer Attitude. Those people are still assholes.

Tonight’s middle-aged point-of-view change involves people and lawns.

Those cranky “older” people who have issues with people, young people in particular, getting on their lawns? It has nothing to do with lawns. Not all the Get-Off-My-Lawn crowd are aware of the root cause of their obsession with keeping people from messing up their lawn isn’t the fact they have a beautiful lawn and they are obsessive about it (or that they are crazy), but it’s true. Those cranky “older” people putting up signs to warn people to “stay off the grass” or “keep off lawn” or even in extreme cases yelling at people to “Get off my lawn!” are really having issues about trespassing, property lines, and neighbors that annoy them. Like I said, they may not be consciously aware of this. I am.

I had an Annoying Boy experience today in the front yard while I was puttering around watching my plants grow. There isn’t too much to say about it, because every encounter with him is about the same. They are all annoying and aggravating, only the topics of conversation and time of day vary. In fact, the only thing about the entire event worth mentioning is that Annoying Boy said something that made me intensely uncomfortable and somewhat intimidated. My perception of him has slid even further toward Dangerous and Evil. In fact, it is now well into the red end of the scale, and I do not want him anywhere near me ever again … and I also do not want him anywhere on my property.

It wasn’t anything horrible enough to make an immediate fuss about, but after I escaped into the house, my first thoughts were how to make my front yard a fortress. There are two ways to do this: put up a big fence or landscape in such a way you can be fussy about people crashing through it or walking on it. I don’t want to sit on my front porch and stare at a big fence. I like being able to see out into the world, and I don’t care if the world looks back, so long as they don’t look too closely and don’t take photos. Therefore, my only option is to become that cranky older lady screaming at people to get off her immaculate lawn and don’t pick the flowers! We don’t have one of those yet in my neighborhood. I think we need one. It’ll give the kids stories to tell their grandchildren.

Of course, landscaping the front yard to make it as beautiful and inaccessible as possible is not the most economical or maybe even the best solution to the fact I do not want Annoying Boy anywhere near me ever again. Someone is going to have to talk to someone from the other side of the property line about it, but I am not sure who should do it or what should be said. I’ve been running simulations of the event in my head all evening, and thus far, the event and the end result never seems to be positive.

I can’t talk to his mom about it. She’s a wild card with a hair-trigger temper and anger issues, and I have no idea what the hell may or may not offend her in some way. I do not want to have the same sorts of situations with her that other neighbors have had. I do try to avoid having any police presence at all in my life. It’s also the sort of drama that is just best avoided at all costs. So, me talking to her is right out.

Talking to the husband about it would, for me, be uncomfortable. I believe I could be adult enough to do it, and I also believe the husband is adult enough to have that sort of conversation, but I am a weenie. I don’t really know him that well, though we do have somewhat easy conversation when the opportunity arises about once a month or so. I do know the wife rules him with an iron fist, and it seems he never wins an argument, so it’s hard to determine whether he would take it well if I said “Your step-son spooks me right out, and could you keep him away from me at all times? Thank you very much.”

Discussing it with Annoying Boy at all is a useless proposition. I have already tried doing that subtly and then not so subtly. Nothing much came of it. A few weeks of peace and quiet.

So that leaves me with having to talk to Lin about it and convincing him to talk to the husband about it. That seems like such a 1950’s sort of thing to do: having the husbands working out the inter-family problems with the neighbors. But what am I supposed to do? I am a small, puny pacifist, and all three of them are the sort of people with whom I have to take their quick tempers, high aggression levels, and tendency to do violence to others while in a rage into account. I don’t know what sets them off, at least not well enough to be able to predetermine their reaction to something, but I have seen what happens once they react badly. I don’t want to be an active participant in anything like that … ever. Not only would it be unpleasant, I am not entirely certain what my own reaction to being in such a situation would be.

I have run simulations in my head, but a definitive answer on that has not been forthcoming. I hope I would be able to maintain my senses, not give into the emotion of the moment, remain calm, and deal with the matter in an adult manner, such as being a calming influence or calling the cops, but I am human and imperfect. I do have buttons that can be pushed, lines that shouldn’t be crossed, and I do not lack for a hair-trigger on my own overly hot temper. Just because it takes a whole lot longer for anything to get close to the buttons and triggers doesn’t mean I don’t have a snapping point. I can’t say for certain, but I believe these people are just insane enough to do something in the heat of the moment to push me right past it.

OK, enough with the neighbor situation, back to tonight’s topic of a middle-aged point-of-view change involving people and lawns.

Not all those cranky older people who want you to stay off their lawns aren’t really all that obsessed with having an immaculate lawn. They are just claiming their right to have their property viewed and respected as belonging to someone else and not as a public park, and their right to have a buffer between themselves and other people … who they may or may not have issues with. It’s also possible the people they originally wanted to avoid having near them have long ago died or moved away, and they got stuck with the attitude. I am going to try to avoid falling into that trap, should the day ever come when Annoying Boy is no longer living within bicycle range of my home. In the meantime, I am going to start planning how to landscape the front yard to be as inhospitable to random visitors as possible, while still being beautiful and enjoyable for us and those we invite into it.

Yup. I don’t think there’s going to be a talking solution to the Annoying Boy problem. None with a positive outcome anyway. But I want to feel safe, secure and happy in my own yard. If that means I have to become Crazy Lawn Woman, so be it.

If I had my way, I’d turn the whole front yard into one big sand and rock Zen garden, and every morning I’d go out, meditate, and rake new patterns into it … and then scream at anyone who disturbed my precious sand waves. That isn’t a very Zen-like thing to do, but it would be an excellent excuse to scream at people to stay off of it. I don’t have a husband who would go for that particular option, so I will probably have to make do with fast-growing hedges on the property lines. For the best, really. I imagine it would only take about a week for my sand and rock Zen garden to be more like the largest kitty litter box in the world than a Zen garden, considering the ever-increasing number of roaming cats we have around here. I don’t even know if Annoying Boy could be taught any better than a stray cat to not mess up the sand. I’m pretty sure a non-stop hedgerow would at least slow him down … when it eventually got thick and tall enough.

Well, anyway, today was great except for the whole Annoying Boy situation which needs to be resolved in one way or another as soon as possible. I’ll tell you about the great stuff in the morning. I promise. It’s really great!

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