| Occasionally I go to my mom's and chill with my sister and her ball and chain. Sometimes I say 'hey' to my mom and my 2-year-old niece, but they're usually asleep at the ungodly hours I show up.
At any rate, Mom and Sis and Pseudo-Hubby have been doing a lot of work on the poor vintage 1965 fixer-upper ranch. In the process, due to laziness, things end up on the lawn before they finally land on the curb for garbage pickup. This includes things like old furniture, drywall fragments, old crappy paneling, and a couple beer bottles. Sure, it's a bit white trash, but so is starting a Jerry Springer-like fight with a volatile 22-year-old woman whose cat died the day previous and pseudo-hubby who's had to put up with her usual psychopathic tendencies on top of the cat thing. And that's just what a lovely neighbor did.
"Clean up your lawn," the man in his mid 50s kept saying to my sister, who was on the front porch having a cigarette. Her cat having been run over (possibly by this man), along with her usual baggage, had not left her tolerant of other assaults on her feeling of well-being. When Sis is upset, the world is upset with her.
She took another drag from her cigarette and quietly exhaled.
The man simply sat in his truck, stopped in the street, and repeated his mantra:
"Clean up your lawn!"
My sister, the Leo she is (let's call her Starla), bursts into verbal flame:
"Shut the fuck up, you fuckin' asshole!"
The man (his name for this episode can be Jimmy Bob) got out of his ancient F-150, equipped with a horrible turquoise camper shell and Larimer County plates (obviously somewhere in the backwoods). He paces up to the porch. A heated verbal fight ensues, and pseudo-hubby, his pseudo-name Bubba (only because he reminds me of Bubba from Mama's Family), hears the commotion and steps out on the porch, skeptical of Starla's credibility. Until the fight ended, that is, and the man stepped away, his final words being "you fat hog".
With that, Bubba refuels the fire. "What the fuck did you say?"
All three involved parties are now screaming at one another.
"What, you wanna go to the park and settle this," Jimmy Bob spits.
"Yeah, whatever. I'll call the fuckin' cops on your bitch ass, you fuckin' motherfucker", ejaculates the eloquent Bubba.
Starla has since gone inside to call the police.
To make a long story not much longer, Jimmy Bob drove away after some more squabbling, and the cops, much to Starla and Bubba's surprise, believed their story and basically hunted Jimmy Bob's ass down like a dog. They surrounded him in front of his house a block away and called in for backup.
The sorry sack was shaking in his undergarments and had next to nothing to say. He has since not been seen anywhere near the house. The cops, in their shiny police SUVs, swarmed his ass and threatened to throw the book at him to demonstrate to the court the effects of osteoporosis.
This morning around 3, I drove past this man's house and saw something peculiar. What was this? An old vacuum cleaner on the porch? This man of such high demand for a spotless neighborhood has since defiled his own property with an old, used up, Avocado-colored piece of ancient Kirby history for all to see!
Fantasy Sequence!
Jimmy Bob is shoveling his sidewalk. I pull up in my Honda and unceremoniously press the button to lower my passenger-side window. "You've got a vacuum cleaner on your porch, sir."
"'Scuse me?"
"You've got a vacuum cleaner on your porch."
"Why don't you mind yer own business, peckerwood?"
"Take that piece of garbage out of my sight!"
"What did you say?!"
"You take that god-awful piece of trash out of public view before I get out of this car and make you!"
"I only answer to ONE white man, and he ain't drivin' no import or tellin' me what ta' do with mah vacuum cleaner. He's up there in the sky shootin' lightnin' bolts at homos and shit!"
"That's it!" I snap. "I swear, I have a mayonnaise jar full of gasoline in the trunk with an oily rag sticking out of it, and I am going to light it and throw it into your driveway and it'll splatter and catch your house, your lawn, and your fucking vacuum cleaner on fire and then I'm going to jump out of the car, grab the flaming fucking vacuum cleaner and beat you vigorously with it, setting your hair and your clothes afire and then I WILL GRAB YOU BY YOUR REMAINING NON-IGNITED HAIR AND SLAM YOUR FACE AGAINST THE HOOD OF MY CAR AND THEN WHEN YOU HAVE BLED ON IT, I WILL HOLD YOUR FACE UP TO MINE AND YELL 'LOOK WHAT YOU DID TO MY PAINT JOB, YOU DICKHEAD' AND KICK YOU IN THE TESTES AS YOU FALL TO THE GROUND AND I RUB SNOW ON YOUR BALD BURNING HEAD OUT OF SYMPATHY BUT THEN LAUGH HYSTERICALLY, IF NOT MANIACALLY AS YOU LAY IN THE FETAL POSITION GRIPPING YOUR THROBBING NUTS AS YOUR EYEBROWS BURN AND I CONTINUE TO BEAT YOUR VACUUM CLEANER AGAINST YOUR DRIVEWAY AND THE FLYING MELTING BITS OF FLAMING VACUUM CLEANER LEAVE NASTY SPOTS IN THE PAINT JOB ON YOUR UGLY-ASS TRUCK, YOU PIECE OF FUCKING TRASH!"
Jimmy Bob's eyes widen and his nostrils flare.
I put the car in 'Park'. I exit the vehicle and diva-walk towards the porch to get to the vacuum cleaner. I push Jimmy Bob aside and pace fearlessly forth. Instead of igniting various people and objects, I decide to take more humane action and simply beat the vacuum cleaner against the driveway until only the handle remains, the vacuum bag sticking to the jagged end of it. Out of nowhere appears a whiskey bottle, and Jimmy Bob breaks it against his mailbox to make the trademark 'broken bottle weapon'.
I, with a sharp and threatening-looking vacuum cleaner fragment, and Jimmy Bob, with a bar brawl-style broken bottle, face off.
EN GARDE!
Jimmy Bob and I circle in the middle of Gladiola Place, lunging towards one another threateningly. Red-faced and spitting with every word, I exclaim:
"Your barroom style is strong, but my antiquated household appliance style is stronger!"
I snap out of the fantasy sequence with a headache and drive home.
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