Neighborly Fun

Okay, that was odd. Our mostly harmless and mostly drunk neighbor just got upset at us because we aren't his friends. We were sitting in the backyard and he walked through his backyard with his usual stash of groceries - a 36-pack of cheap beer. I said Hello and he said Hello and then Goodbye and went inside. Then we heard him grumbling and swearing, which he does a lot anyway, but suddenly he came back outside and stood at the fence. "You know what?" he said, sort of slurrily. I think he'd already had a few. "If you don't want anything to do with me that's fine, but this fence is going down." I'm paraphrasing here. J. said "What are talking about?" and Neighbor responded that he tries to be friendly and say hello and we just ignore him. Um, didn't I just say hello first? But he wasn't listening to our responses, he turned around and went inside his house. And what the hell is he talking about taking down the fence for? It's our fence. So he can't. I guess we'll just ignore that little outburst...and hope it doesn't come up again. Weird.

In other neighborly news, I was out walking Cocoa the other day and as we were walking down the sidewalk of a nearby street, I saw a child up ahead grab a sapling and throttle it so hard I was sure it was going to snap in two. Then just about the time I decided to cross to the other side of the street with Cocoa, he spotted us and started towards us yelling "CAN I PET YOUR DOG?!" For once I said no, I don't think so. I usually like to let children pet Cocoa and try to teach them a couple things about petting dogs (never put your face near a dog you don't know, etc.) but this child was like Damien. Luckily he didn't pursue us.