Today I came home from work at the usual time, and discovered the kids playing in the road. Fine by me–I figure if I can’t beat 'em, the least I can do is seethe silently.
TODAY, Asshat Neighbor Numero Uno has done something that even insane people take notice of:
She’s allowing her fucking BABY, all of 12-16 months old, to crawl around in the goddamn street. She actually had to run out into the middle of the goddamn street to remove her child from the path of any oncoming traffic.
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE!?!
No, honestly–what the hell is WRONG with these people? Now, instead of endangering her eldest asshat spawn, they’re willing to endanger the life of her youngest child as well?
Oh, and Kyomara? Ever heard of a road? Paved thing, people drive on it and such? NOT a fucking playground. Playgrounds have swingsets and slides and such. Roads have big honking two-ton vehicles trying to get from one place to another. So unless you’d like to have all roads and motorways declared playpens by the state of Arizona, I suggest you sit back in your Chair of Smugness and drink a warm glass of shut the hell up. :rolleyes:
I’d really like some advice from you all out there–what can I realistically do about this? It’s gone from a minor annoyance, to What-The-Fuck-Are-These-People-Thinking, to This-Can’t-Possibly-Be-Legal-or-Intelligent.
An extreme measure that will forever incur the wrath of said neighbors, but a very effective measure nonetheless. All it takes is a video tape of the toddler being allowed to crawl into the nice dirty dangerous street and a call to Child Protective Services.
Are you sure you aren’t living next door to Michael Jackson? I hear he has a penchant for endangering his offspring as well.
(I see other people posted while I was composing, but here goes anyway.)
:eek: :eek: :eek:
Jesus Christ our lord. Even in the complete absence of cars, a paved road is still no place for a baby! There’s dirt and motor oil and all kinds of germs! Babies are like, if they see it, they put it in their mouth, and in this case, it would be pebbles and glass shards and little bits of tire! And Pwecious will get hir little bunny jumpsuit smeared, maybe torn!
What do you suppose this woman’s house looks like?
No, the law would (hopefully) protect you from punishment if you hit a child that was breaking the law, but I seriously doubt that anyone here would really hit a child and then shrug their shoulders and say “well, not my problem, I was obeying the law.”
Totally uncalled for. I was very polite to you.
Look, man, kids play in the street!! Reality does not always obey the law. You can declare out-and-out war on your neighbors and make your drive home every day a stressful experience, which you would be entirely within your rights to do. OR you can be aware of the fact that you live in a residential neighborhood and that you are a member of a community and try to work with them to reach some sort of compromise that makes everyone happy and comfortable. That’s all I’m saying.
But good god man:
This one is class-A fucknugget. Compromise does require a certain level of intelligence on both sides of the bargaining table. If this woman is an indicative of all the neighbors you’re dealing with, compromise may be entirely impossible after all.
Kyomara, everyone knows that kids will play in the street when they can get away with it. In this case, the parents are encouraging the kids to play in the street instead of getting off their asses and taking the kids into the park across the street.
That’s the point, Kyomara. The Chastains and other residents in their neighborhood shouldn’t have to fear the possibility of hitting a child with their car. It’s an unreasonable risk.
No overreaction at all from the OP in my opinion. (Kyomara, I think the OP was ranting about these people blocking the street for no good reason, not about his intense desire to speed down the street being thwarted).
What really burns my buns is that people who have their own kids are still incredibly irresponsible and thoughtless around other peoples’ children. These morons on Chastain’s street probably speed through playground zones when it’s not their own children on the line. I have no kids, never will, and I still respect playground and school zones, and don’t speed in residential areas. I wish I could say the same of people who obviously do have kids (sitting right in their middle-finger mobiles with them), but I can’t, cause they’re usually the ones tailgating me to try to make me go faster.
People just have no damn sense, you know?
The street where featherlou and I live is littered with kids, particularly on our end, and most of them consider the street to betheir playground, in spite of their being a school a block away and another major playground a block and a half away in the other direction. As there is rarely parental supervision, we have been forced to watch out for the little house monkeys for them. In fact, one scurried out from behind a parked car directly into my path just today on his razor scooter. Had I not seen his feet behind the car and anticipated what he was about to do, I would’ve mowed his stupid ass down, regardless of the fact that I was doing well under the speed limit (roughly 15 kph). And I would be the one facing the lawsuit!
I feel for you, Chastain. There are far too many parents out there these days who have no interest in training their spawn to watch for traffic. I played street hockey like all the other kids in my neighbourhood growing up, but everyone knew to watch for and get the hell out of the way of cars, as several people have noted above.
You are not out of line. Unfortunately, it would likely require the death of one of Mr. and Mrs. Asshat’s kids for them to realize that encouraging their kids to play out there, oblivious to the danger, is a bad, bad idea.
(In a perfect world, you could put out a contract on the whole friggin’ family, so as to prevent their genes from further contaminating the planet. At least, in my perfect world, with me as tough-but-fair dictator.)
