Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Nickles and Dimes

The mountain man and I have taken to sitting out on the front porch these last few weeks. (Yes, constant reader, in our matching rocking chairs. The excitement of summer in suburbia is overwhelming, isn’t it?)

Seeing as how we are usually back door people (to the YARD, people, the BACK yard-minds out of the gutter, please!), we now have a view of our neighborhood in motion we don’t usually see. Case in point: the neighbors diagonal to us have apparently gone on vacation. Without their children (jealous much? I am). The first sign of this came on Wednesday night at 1 a.m. Our dogs woke me up to incessant barking, not one of their usual annoying traits (not to worry-they have plenty of other annoying traits). I ran to the window, and what did I see? (No, dear reader, NOT eight tiny reindeer-no body likes a smart ass) Twenty teens milling about on the neighbor’s front lawn in various stages of inebriation. I sighed, threw each dog a fresh bone (why, yes, I do reward bad behaviour), and went to bed.

Thursday night found cars parked parked facing the wrong way up and down our quiet little block. Thankfully? It appeared the party had moved to the back yard.
Friday night? Fifty cars and tons of kids all over their yard. Saturday afternoon brought the lion's share of them back out to their cars, squinting in the bright sunlight. Mountain man and I sat perched on our porch and chuckled at these walking zombies.

Saturday night brought the block to new heights. Cars, kids, and fireworks rocked our neighbor's usually humble abode. The laughter, carousing, and partying continued well into Sunday morning. The mountain man and I? Took everything in from the porch. (Hell, we had been out until almost ten ourselves the night before. We were too tired to do anything but observe!)

Sunday evening found us rocking our private little party on the porch (read: me + mountain man + a couple of cold drinks = whoo hoo!)
Around five o'clock, the neighbor's house became a flurry of activity! Teens were scurrying every where, picking up debris in the yard, and I can only imagine, doing one hell of a spit shine inside.
A teen driven SUV backed up to the garage, and three over loaded garbage bags were spirited to the back of the vehicle, cans and bottles clanking all the way. The SUV, which must have stunk of stale beer -yech-pulled out and yurned into a strip mall at the end of our block. Even from our porch, you could hear those bottles and cans as each bag was pitched into a dumpster.
The same SUV pulled back into the driveway and re-loaded. Three more times. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. Back and forth to the dumpster.

Mountain man and I admired the teens savvy---to be smart enough not to just leave the trash with the household garbage. Or with their neighbor's trash. We drank. We applauded them. We laughed.

Then? I had an epiphany. How funny would it be, if the mountain man and I pulled our pick up truck (OK. OK. His pick up truck- I wouldn't dare soil my little sports car)--anyway, we could pull his pick up truck over to the dumpster in the strip mall parking lot, and then haul out all the bags of empty beer cans and bottles, and deposit them back on the neighbor's lawn after dark!

"Wouldn't that be a hoot, mountain man?"

**Crickets**

"Mountain man? Wouldn't that be funny?"

More **crickets**.

"mysuestories? Don't you think that might get them in trouble? Don't you remember when you were a young whippersnapper?"

Yeah. I totally did. But this? This would be funny. I told him as much.

Apparently? Mountain man and I have different views on funny.

However, mountain man was willing to participate in part of my plan.

"hey, mysuestories, you know, all those bottles and cans? There's got to be about thirty bucks in nickle deposits sitting in that dumpster..."

Yeah. Different ideas of funny. Me? I don't dumpster dive for cash. For laughs, yes. Cash? No.