Stop That Rude ‘Tude, Dude

The next time I spout off about how we need to remember that the bigly commandment which encompasses the essence of all the others is to love our neighbor, poke me in the eye. Twice. Remind me of the poet, Robert Frost’s line about how “Good fences make good neighbors.” Tell me about how boundaries can be a blessing. Oh, who am I kidding? I understand Frost’s point about boundaries, but—schmuck that I am—I will always err on the side of looking out for my neighbors, especially if they are my literal neighbors. You see, I was raised in the vein of John Donne’s “No man is in island,/ Entire of itself,/ Every man is a piece of the continent,/ A part of the main.” See how I blather on about our connectedness and responsibility to each other? So—like I said initially in this post—when I get honking on about looking out for literal neighbors, poke me in the eye. Twice.

Tuesday is our weekly garbage day. Every Monday night before I go up to bed, I drag our garbage can out to the curb. Every other week, I put out our recycling can with it. The cans are usually emptied by 8 A.M. Tuesday morning. Yesterday, however, no bigly trucks came to empty either can. We live on a sort of obscure Centerville street, and about once a year, the garbage and recycling company misses our row of town homes. At noon, I called the company to let them know our street had been missed for collection. They were able to send out a garbage truck to do the missed garbage pick-up immediately, but the recycling would have to wait to be collected until the next day, which is today. I wanted to alert my neighbors to leave their recycling cans at the curb for one more night—despite what the HOA rules say—so they won’t have to hold onto their recycling until the next scheduled recycling day, which is in another two weeks. I didn’t want to interfere with my neighbors’ days by knocking on each of their doors to explain the situation, so I opted for the ever-useful Post-It Notes route. I wrote a note (as seen here) on a Post-It, which I stuck on the lid of each recycling can on the street—where they would see the note before rolling their still-full recycling can back into their garages. (Please note that I chose to use the newer “Extreme” Post-It Notes which stick through all manner of wind, rain, snow, temperature, and Mormon crickets, so there would be no possibility of unstuck and lost messages.)

So there I was—ambling down the street, placing a handwritten Post-It message on each neighbor’s recycling can. I stuck the last note on the last garbage can. No sooner had I placed it when some guy I vaguely recognize as one of my neighbors yells out the window of his approaching car, “Why are you touching my recycling? You have no right to touch my recycling.” So much for doing a silent good deed with the intention of not wanting to disturb my neighbors. I don’t know anything about this guy who’s yelling at me, and this guy clearly doesn’t know me—which is very odd since I am the only one in my neighborhood who wears a Bow Tie o’ the Day over to the Great Wall o’ the Housing Development Mailboxes 6 days per week. I tried to explain my mission to the man, but he wasn’t giving me an opening to say anything. His diatribe went on, and I finally turned around and walked back home, wondering when it started to be common for people to begin by assuming the worst of their neighbors. When did it become the fashion to begin every kind of human interaction by metaphorically balling up one’s fists and taking a fighting stance? Apparently, in this neck of the woods, it began sometime before yesterday afternoon.

But guess what. This morning, I noticed that the bantam doofus must have read my note, because he left his recycling at the curb overnight. I do not expect he will mosey over to my place to apologize to me or thank me for my Post-It Note efforts at following what I consider to be the bigliest of commandments. Nor do I need him to do so. 🥊 🤺 🤼‍♂️