Barking Mad

We have a bit of a tense relationship with the inma--...er...residents of one of the streets we have to drive on to get out of the subdividision. They like the speed limit on their street to be 20 mph. They also like their speed bumps. They have a tendency to get, um, militant about it. A couple of months ago, the roads were all resurfaced so they are now all loose gravel instead of asphalt (I don't see the improvement there, either, but then again I don't give a flip what the POA reeeely does). Oh, if you are extremely wealthy and live on 'that' street you have a lovely asphalt road in front of your house as well as the contract to resurface it. Go figure. With the resurfacing, the speed bumps disappeared, so I felt like someone got their money's worth. Speed bumps were my only sticking point, really. With a civic that has an air dam four inches off the ground, speed bumps are from hell.

So, one night, Dad and I are returning from...somewhere, not important enough to remember, right? A posse had gotten together to meet us. To be quite frank, sometimes we speed and sometimes we don't. Usually we don't. If we speed, then we're talking a max of 25 because the civic has a decent idle there and we aren't riding the brakes (which annoys the hell out of me). In my truck, staying under 20 is no problem unless you're going down hills. That's not the case here. In the van, 20-25 is easy to maintain, but right at 20? It really depends on the day. None of these folks except one have kids--at least not the under eighteen sort--despite the children at play sign. And the ones that do aren't even really on that street and believe it or not...we can see kids and dogs and humans and have yet in our sordid history to hit one. Nevertheless, they were there on the side of the road talking, we thought, then this guy jumped out in front of us. Now that was scary. He and dad exchanged words. We drove on.

Then two things happened. The next day a Constable showed up to talk to us. He basically said he had to because the lady on the corner had called and that the whole street was paranoid and a bunch of stuff we already knew. He was nice and moved on about his day.

And....the lady on the corner lost her mind.

For five (almost six years) she's always walked her dog into the grass and smiled in a neighborly fashion when I drove past. I wave. She waves. We smile. I go on about my business. But now? Now she does this Vivienne Leigh thing with gasp of mortal dread she yanks the dog by the neck and it lands, barking, in the yard. Then, I kid you not, she starts barking...like a dog. For effect, she makes her free hand "bark" also and tosses her head from side to side and wiggles her hips a bit.

Never a dull moment.
Scat