Neighborly Advice

Ten Commandments for My New Neighbor


Living in a duplex, I go through neighbors like a family of cats goes through a five pound bag of litter that freshens with every step, and I have some friendly advice. If you want to make a go of it in this neighborhood, you’ll listen up and not staple this list to the hood of my car like the last guy did. If you want a reference from him, he is residing peacefully at Happy Acres Memorial Gardens. Feel free to use my name.

1. Old tents and ripped cushions in lawn furniture may be acceptably repaired with duct tape. Back windows in old Fords or open wounds on small children may not. Neither is it a substitute for nails and a willingness to locate a hammer when your mailbox has been detached from its post. A mailbox trussed to a wooden spike by thirty rounds of silver adhesive looking like a tin can with a toothache causes undue stress in an already unstable housing market.

2. John Deere makes a wide selection of lawn tractors. That six month old goat you’ve got tethered to a hubcap with three feet of heavy links like he’s the anchor man on a baby goat chain gang is not an acceptable substitute. Let’s send you out on a short leash to get the morning paper and see if you affect a change of heart.

3. In the future, please Just Say No to the idea of mowing the lawn clad only in your underwear. Indulge in a roomy pair of gym shorts and you’ll find yourself zipping up the popularity poll in the neighborhood before you know it.

4. A privacy fence is for, well, privacy. Please don’t launch your youngest child over the top of the fence like a punted football to find out what we’ve got cooking outside. We are not responsible for stray grill marks.

5. If you have a taste for loud music, please play something I know or can understand the words to. Having the tune to a rap song I don’t know stuck in my head will lead to my hanging about in your bushes trying to find out what words sound like “scratch my itch.”

6. A swimming pool is commonly used for swimming. I’m sure your new bass boat will skip over the lake like a flat stone, but trying out your new motor in the above-ground will result in an appearance on Funniest Home Videos. Remember there’s nothing to impede your progress toward the slime pit across the street except that scraggly row of dandelions you call a flower garden.

7. Please don’t sneak over under cover of darkness to partake of the blueberries on my bushes. I’ll be glad to share. Just like you’ll be glad to share that mess of freshly caught trout with me next summer. Also, I don’t mind if your kids climb the tree in my back yard to purloin fruit. But keep in mind the results from a morning filled with little green apples leads to an afternoon filled with personal aerobics of a stressful kind.

8. I understand if your Uncle Earl had an evening of social entertaining that leads to a hearty headache the next morning. But if any more of his “nieces” ring my doorbell at three in the morning clad in leopard-print hip boots and a leather halter top and ask to use my litter box, I’m calling Animal Control.

9. This is the South. We surpass just about everyone in the number of per capita lawn ornaments. But those plywood cutouts of Granny bending over to show her polka dot bloomers have been done to death. At least get something classy like one of those windmills that look like the roadrunner’s legs are going in a circle. Roadrunners are like pearls. They’re always appropriate.

10. Close your curtains. The neighbors don’t need to know that it was necessary to summon the Jaws of Life to your home for the sole purpose of retrieving your wife from the Jacuzzi.

11. Here's an extra commandment, just because I'm feeling festive. If your idea of decorating for Christmas is tying a sprig of mistletoe to the beltloop in the back of your pants, walk slowly past my driveway. I have a large dog who has issues with anything sporting a bushy tail. And by the way, unless your name is Jeff Foxworthy, we don't require proof that you're a redneck.

Attached you’ll find a request for samples from your garden for quality assurance purposes, a form for proof of vaccinations, and a sterile baggie for DNA testing. Merry Christmas and welcome to the neighborhood.

Red, White, & Oops

Independence Day is here, and as expected, celebrations of picnics, cookouts, and truckloads of rednecks fueled by the Big Boy sized beer setting fire to things that will blow up are in full force.

Nothing says Freedom like an intoxicated man named Bubba Earl flicking the long lighter and trying to set fire to a fuse the size of a tapeworm that's dancing in the breeze like amber waves of grain. Come dusk, hoards of folks will gather in the shadows of school parking lots to Oooh! Aaaah! and splash a pitcher of, let’s say, lemonade on the proceedings should the pyrotechnics or Bubba Earl get out of hand.

That’s what’s great about the South. It is legal to purchase fireworks in the state of South Carolina without presenting so much as an IQ score to the authorities. The people of South Carolina are perfectly within their rights to light themselves up like the space shuttle leaving for star-spangled skies, and other people have to content themselves with following safety standards and obeying the laws of common sense.

There’s something about not know whether the next bottle rocket will explode in the night sky in a sparkling array of gemstone colored glitz or skim down the pavement toward the spectators like a heat seeking ferret on steroids to make you appreciate what went on at the battle of Bunker Hill.

My apprehension might be due to a small mishap last year when a sidewalk-skidding bottle rocket came close to crossing my Reeboks at a steady clip and lighting up my inseam like a birthday candle. But after all, what is Independence Day for if not for celebrating with an impromptu break dance in the handicapped parking section of the schoolyard? I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say the Boston Harbor gang has nothing on me when it comes to open air tea parties.

Uncle Joe is revered around these parts as sort of an expert on the subject of fireworks, having set his leg on fire on at least one occasion in the time honored tradition, and is well-respected in the backyard pyrotechnic community. If this year goes according to tradition, we’ll have quite a few stories and a modicum of minor injuries.

Not too many years ago we shunned his backyard display for an extravaganza taking place just past the intersection and before the blinking red light on the edge of town. Luckily it was held at the fire department because when the pasture caught on fire and all the fireworks went off at once, we didn’t even get 911 dialed before Tiny and Pork Chop responded to the blaze.

So this year we’ll probably go back to Uncle Joe’s. At least he restricts the damage to his own self, as a gentleman should.

I’ll take along an extra pair of pants. And some bandaids.

Nothing but Net

I’m finally beginning to understand what all the fuss is, about the World Cup. Here in the United States, where it takes a team of Clydesdales and a professional athlete with a pending felony charge to get a football game rolling, we don’t appreciate the fact that every other country in the world is up to their ankles in a sport where a forward pass takes place at a level where feet are more important that fingers and there is something more spectacular to see than girls with extended ribcages and multicolored pompoms.

And all along I thought the World Cup was half of a really big bra.

In America, when we’re still yelling at our kids, “Don’t grind the crumbs into the carpet with your foot. Pick that up with your hands,” international mamas are saying, "How are you going to dribble if you can't even kick your sister?"

I don’t think these World Cup guys started as babies discovering their fingers. Once they got their toes in hand, they were ready to play. These guys learn to use their feet for fancy ball work better than many of my relatives use cutlery at the family reunion. That’s why we have mostly finger foods; Cousin Earl is still puzzled by the spork.

I don’t want to toot my own vuvuzela here, but my kids have played soccer since they were so small their shin guards doubled as a protective cup. (The vuvuzela is horn that produces an obnoxious noise in support of the obnoxious behavior on the field or in the row behind you. We have something like that in America, too. We call them “Yankee’s fans.”)

Son Two opted out of soccer when he realized that games competed with Ninja Turtles time on Saturday morning (after all, Michaelangelo was a Party Dude), but Son One played until he stretched the envelope of the age limit far enough to require extra postage. Rules state that once you’re old enough to serve in Congress, you can’t play AYSO soccer.

When my kids first started soccer they spent more time chasing the ball into the woods than kicking it into the net. I’ve never seen World Cup play halted for a parent to dash onto the field to tie somebody’s shoe. Son One took his job seriously as a ninja goalie and didn’t allow me on the field even when he was six, but I don't mind admitting that the time he tied his shoe to the string in his pants was a show stopper.

Team USA is out of the competition for this year, but their inspiring play brought the game to our attention like never before. Americans have a dedicated mindset when in comes to sports and I’m sure they will use the four years between now and the next World Cup competition boning up on the rules, finding out more about their favorite players, and planning ways to make a profit by selling bobblehead dolls. After all, the way to our hearts takes a direct path through our wallets.

I hope they never have the games in this country, though. After watching the SuperBowl commercials, I'm convinced that if the World Cup took place in the United States, someone in advertising would try to supersize it and add fries.