For example, there are two neighbors who think it's appropriate to let their young, grade-school-age children drive motorized vehicles on the street. We're not talking 12-year-old kids, I mean little, like maybe seven years old. It must be illegal, right?
It's for damn sure dangerous, especially as fast as people drive in Georgia.
I grew up when your parents told you to go outside and play and they didn't have a clue where you were or what you were doing, so it's not as if I grew up with parents hovering, but even as a free-range kid, I would never let my kids drive ATVs on the street, not at such a young age.
Then there's the neighbors who put their dog outside, leave it outside for extended stretches of time, and don't do anything when it barks. And barks. And barks.
Literally, I've never seen anything like this. When I had dogs, if they were outside and wouldn't stop barking even after I told them to be quiet, they were brought inside the house. My neighbor at my other house down here, even said after I moved in to just let her know if the dogs were annoying me. They never did because she did the same thing I did. Brought them in if they wouldn't be quiet.
I only moved a couple of blocks from my old neighborhood in this subdivision and this one neighbor does nothing to quiet the dog. Nothing. Which is totally uncool, especially when I'm trying to write.
Then there's all the vehicles that need new mufflers. Apparently this is a thing for young men down here? I don't know if they're in their teens or early twenties, but OMG! Doesn't that noise make them crazy?
This isn't so much my neighborhood as my how things have changed. A while back, the bus driver stopped to drop these grade-school-age kids off in the afternoon. Their house is right on the corner. The kids would cross the street and be in their yard, that's how close it was. The mother wasn't outside standing on the corner and the bus driver wouldn't let the kids off. In fact, the driver honked to get the mother outside. Only then were the kids allowed off the bus.
Is this normal? I mean, when I was a kid, like eight or nine, I walked to school winter, spring or fall. It had to be at least a mile and we took shortcuts through people's yards and stuff. Even when I did take the bus, I walked down the street about half a block because our bus didn't stop in front of every kid's house like they do down here. Not only that, but my mom only walked me down the first day of school. After that, I was on my own. No one thought this was strange.
Now, apparently, kids can't walk across the street without their mom standing there? Wow, have things ever changed.
I think I'll save the Home Owner's Association because this blog post is long enough. :-)
