The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self-respect springs.
~Joan Didion
“Daisy, I need you.”
I’m out the door before she can answer, feet over the fence, three seconds later.
“Hey,” I yell.
I land in front of both of them, but grab the bigger one by the shirt as he’s passing. He’s holding a handful of labels from the post office. Kindergarten logic paints his paws as red as the stop sign he just slapped a label on.
He shrugs me off, and starts to walk, his friend a beat behind.
I grab his shirt, pull him toward me, then sidestep in front.
“You’re going to clean that off, or you’re gonna wait for the cops.”
He stares.
I stare back.
The vandal’s a big kid, not used to being challenged. He’s between fifteen and seventeen, six foot two, two-hundred and fifty pounds.
He’s got seventy-five pounds on me, at least, but I’ve the advantage of an inch, and I press it on him like it’s the peak of a mountain.
“Two choices.”
He shrugs me off and turns. I maneuver back in front.
Silent, I produce my phone and hit the police, non emergency (our neighborhood is such that this number is immediately accessible).
“Fine,” he says, approaching the stop sign, “but it don’t come off.”
“It will come off. The last time I scraped one of those stickers, it took half an hour, but I’m probably faster than you.”
He stares, hate boiling. ”I don’t have to do this,” he says.
“Then don’t.”
He stands on tip toe, and peels the sticker from the sign. When it’s gone, he scrapes the scraps with the scraps of his nails. Every peer is peering, dozens of eyes, peeking from windows, trees, and alleys.
I’m on my corner, arms folded, watching him work, enjoying it far more than when I’m the one scraping. It took three years to get the four way stop put on our corner, two days to get it tagged.
“I bet you wouldn’t have done that if your mama was watching,” I say.
“I just did it while my grandma was watching,” he boasts. There is genuine pride in his face, but it is clearly masking a different emotion.
“I hope she’s watching right now.”
The stop sign is shining and he turns to leave. ”Don’t forget the trash can.” I point to the can on the corner.
The can on the corner came from our city. We waited two years. We wipe it down and dump it every Friday. This is preferable to the era when we didn’t have the can, and people instead used our yard, sidewalk, and hedges.
Since we’ve had the can, it’s suffered intermittent detonations in the few weeks preceding and following the Fourth of July. At the moment, I’m looking at a postal sticker splayed across the side. I didn’t see my new friend do it, and don’t know for a fact he was the culprit, but it matters not at all.
He continues to stare, hatred now mingled with defeat. The sticker peels off the trash can like they always do.
I let him leave, but not without a final word. ”You need to show respect around my property.”
“Which one’s yours?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yeah,” he sneers.
“The whole corner,” I say. ”Anything in eyesight of my kids.”
He walks away. I turn back to the house.
I’m being watched, not just by Daisy and the entire neighborhood.
Our final client of the day is on standing on our porch. I wonder what he’s thinking, but then I see the applause on his face and feel relieved.
We live in one of the oldest houses, in the oldest part of our city. The neighborhood was overcrowded to begin with, and has continued to brim. We nurture our corner and it’s improved immeasurably since we planted a flag in our preschool three years back.
Neighborhoods are life, filled with all kinds of people.
Life advances with effort and deteriorates with apathy. Income means nothing, manners are free.
I believe in my neighborhood (always have), but the mothers and fathers of today should be paying more attention to the mothers and fathers of tomorrow.
Writer Dad
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