Mom on the Run at http://abnormallynormal2007.blogspot.com/2008/09/dear-neighbor.html had an issue with a rude and thoughtless neighbor. It got me to thinking how Trad Dad resolved a similar issue with a neighbor many years ago. That's me in the picture back in those Madras filled days of 1966. It was on this very spot at Ft Bragg... or was it Ft Bliss. Maybe Ft Sill. Anyway, it's not important. Suffice it to say, we were living on post during the height of the Vietnam War. It was crowded. Quarters were few and far between and even though Trad Dad was a captain we were quartered in senior enlisted housing. One can only hope they have since been torn down. But knowing the Army - - I doubt it.Early one morning I watched as Trad Dad stuck the first of many little white flags into our front yard. Made from wire coat hangers and a bed sheet these flags, over a week's time, began to fill our postage stamp of a yard so much that it began to look like a putting green. After a couple of weeks Trad Dad invited the next door neighbor over for a late afternoon BBQ. Earlier in the day Trad Dad treated me to a top down drive in the Berkley (a chain driven British sports car that rarely ran) and slot car racing at a hobby track in Fayettville. I remember lusting for a Batmobile slot car but Trad Dad would have none of that. Instead, we raced a blue Ford GT 40 with a Cox hand control. It also rarely ran.
Later in the afternoon the neighbor and Trad Dad are drinking beers on the back yard (4x6) patio when the neighbor laughingly asks, "Hey, what's up with all those flags in your front yard?" Trad Dad slowly turns to him, takes a long drag off his cigarette and replies through exhaled smoke, "That's where your dog shits in my yard." Years later, when I tried to understand "Passive - Aggressive behaviour, I would think back to this story that had turned into a family legend. There you go, Mom on the Run. Sometimes a little Passive-Aggresive is just what a neighbor needs.
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