by Don Hall

We have neighbors across the way. It's an apartment complex in Vegas which means we're all pretty close together and that the walls are thinner than in the MidWest. We hear these two fighting constantly.

A few months ago, Dana heard him outside screaming "WHO PUT DOGSHIT ON MY DOOR? WHO MOTHERFUCKING PUT FUCKING DOGSHIT ON MY DOOR?" They have a dog. It seemed someone saw them take the dog out, he popped a deuce, and they left it sitting there. Seems that someone scooped up the crap and left it in front of their door. Passive aggressive but hardly unjustified. He lost his shit and, according to other neighbors (including the 76-year old single lady right next door to us) yelled and stomped about it for 45-minutes.

I came home that night without any of this info but discovered salad dressing covering our doorknob. It was spread on the doorknobs of the other three doors nearest theirs. Their doorknob, of course, was absent the condiment. The next morning I got the skinny. I shrugged, grabbed some towels and cleaner and washed the Garlic Italian-ness from everyone's door.

A few weeks later, I heard the young lady screaming at the top of her lungs at one of our maintenance workers. The property is well kept and the staff are uniformly friendly. Her issue was that one of them looked at her. As far as I could tell, that was it. She didn't like the way one of them looked at her. As she yelled and ranted, neighbors poked their heads out to yell at her for yelling at him. Her accusation went from being looked at wrong to being harassed to being assaulted.

She called the police.

Unfortunately, the whole village was witness to the whole thing so the police came to discover the almost comical elevation of her j'accuse from a look to assault. They wrote her up for misuse of 911.

Out of rage or fear or petulance, we misuse a lot of handy tools at our disposal.

TOOLS WE MISUSE ROUTINELY:

The Police.

We (as in the generalized collective population of any given city in any given state of the country) call the police when our cable is out, our electricity goes dark, when we feel like the customer service is bad, when there are black kids being loud on the street (or swimming or hanging out in cars or walking or skateboarding or pretty much anything a black kid might do in public). We call the law on people refusing to wear masks and on employees who won't let you in the store without one. 

Podcasts & Netflix

These are medium designed to entertain and, in some cases, cause you to think about the world. Even the myriad podcasts by two idiots yapping about shit and the Netflix quasi-documentaries are still a good use. These are not designed to solve crime. I understand—in a world where everyone has grown up watching Cold Case Files and Unsolved Mysteries as well as CSI, we all believe we can grab an iPhone, a microphone, and be Nancy Fucking Drew but we can't and we aren't.

Your car horn

It’s designed to be tapped to indicate your presence and help with awareness and safety. It is not there to jam down on it to blare your wailing formless profanity at the old lady in the turn lane. Grow up.

Social Media.

The initial point was to rate hot girls on campus. Then it became a way to connect digitally with people we know to share information about our day, our thoughts, our ideas. It morphed into a means to organize under activist leanings. Now, it's mostly used to talk shit, share misinformation, spread conspiracy theories, and organize boycotts of things and people we don't like or agree with.

The Manager

The manager isn't there to make you feel better or appreciated. The manager exists to put together schedules, make sure all the workers are working safely and in a timely manner, maybe open and/or close the business daily. The manager is there to train employees, keep morale up in the workplace, follow OSHA rules, and ensure that women working are not harassed. Your issue with the burger that is missing pickles or your dissatisfaction with the just-outta-high-school counter person is not a good use of the manager's time. Quietly accept a bit less than perfection and stuff it up your ass.

Public Education.

Back in the day, social studies was one small part of the instructional day. Now, social indoctrination is present when learning math, English, home economics, music, art, library, and gym. You know, because of white supremacy and all of that completely non-specific, result-driven, mushy pseudoscientific 'look at the effect then assign the cause' dogma.

My neighbor's dogshit

C'mon.