Barking up the wrong tree

My next-door neighbors never come outside. I don’t know if it’s a Barnabas Collins deal or if they are allergic to the sun, but we never see them, which is fine, because I don’t want to have to remember their names and make small talk with them.

But we may be headed toward war, thanks to their dogs. Two things you don’t want in your life are neighbor trouble and in-law trouble, but I may not be able to avoid the former.

The other morning, Lucky, my dog, was in the back yard going crazy, growling and barking and making kamikaze runs at the fence. This meant that something was on the other side of the fence that was disturbing her. With Lucky, you never know – it could be a cat or a neighborhood kid or an al Qeada sleeper cell. Her reaction is the same.

So I went outside to investigate and saw the culprit – a rat was running around my front yard. I yelled at it to get out of there, and then it barked at me. Well, I’m no Marlin Perkins, but I know that rats don’t bark, so I looked more closely and realized it was the neighbor’s Chihuahua.

I despise that Chihuahua. Actually, my vampire neighbors have two of them, and they bark non-stop every second that they’re outside. The neighbors have a wooden swing set in their back yard, and the Chihuahuas find it entertaining to scurry to the top of it, which gives them a good vantage from which to look into my yard and bark their high-pitched incessant noise at Lucky. I can’t speak dog language, but I’m pretty sure whatever they’re saying is insulting.

This hurts Lucky’s feelings, since she’s never done anything to those yappy beasts, and so she naturally responds by barking back at them. I can’t blame her, but I don’t want to hear it, so then I have to go out back and curse at Lucky, which makes us both feel bad.

Anyway, on the morning I saw them running around – there’s a brown one and a black one – I went next door to tell the neighbors that their dogs had gotten out of the fence. I wasn’t really being nice; I just wanted them to get away from my fence before Lucky had a heart attack. Eventually a woman came to the door – I could only assume that she was the lady of the house, since I haven’t seen her outside in five years – and I told her that I believed her cute little dogs had gotten loose.

This woman looked like she’d just risen from a coma. She didn’t say a word to me, just said over her shoulder, “The Chihuahuas are out,” turned her back to me and crept back to her coffin. In a few seconds an older woman appeared, and she brushed past me out the door, looking for the miniature menaces.

I walked around to the side of the house and pointed to a spot where the dogs had dug out under her fence. She just grunted, then pointed to some boards that had been tossed into the ditch between your yards and said, “Are those your boards?” I said, “No, m’am, I don’t throw crap in the ditch and leave it.” She missed my sarcasm and went to get a board to seal up the hole. Nice people.

Sunday I took Lucky for a walk, and as we walked past the neighbor’s house, I heard the yapping again. The brown Chihuahua was again running free in the front yard, and it was coming toward us in a menacing manner. Lucky glanced at it with a look that said, “One step closer and I’m going to have an early supper,” and I told the dog, “Don’t make me step on you, Taco Bell.” It finally backed off, but never shut up.

In addition, there are other dogs added to the mix. From their back yard I often hear a deep, bellowing bark, coming from some sort of hound dog. And lately, in addition to the escaped Chihuahua, there is often another small dog in front of their house, tied to a bush, trailer-park style. That’s really going to help property values.

I don’t know what’s going to happen. Hopefully they’ll fix it so the Chihuahuas can’t get out of the fence, or maybe they’ll keep them in the house, or maybe they’ll just run away. I just hope I don’t get one of them on my shoe.

Call me Mark

At church Sunday, two separate people called me David. Granted, I’ve been called much worse than that, but it irritated me a little bit, because that’s not my name.

Well, OK, it IS my name, but it’s not the one I go by. I go by Mark. Don’t ask my why I go by my middle name. That was my parents’ doing. By the time I realized that, I was well-established as a Mark and there was no going back.

I probably had it coming to me, anyway, because last week I went to a music store in Griffin with my daughter, and introduced her to a guy who works there that I’ve known for about 20 years. “This is my friend, John,” I told her. I noticed John had a bit of a strange look on his face, and I realized why later in the car, when it occurred to me that his name is actually David.

And there’s another guy at church who called me David for years, which is all right, because I called him Bill all that time, and his name is David. Complicating matters as the fact that my son is also named David. What is it about that name?

I have a neighbor who lives across the street from me, and for many years we have stood outside in our yards and talk about football or golf or yard work and other important man-stuff. I would say, “Hey, Clay, how are you doing?”, or “See you later, Clay.”

One day my wife saw his wife in the grocery store, and the woman made a couple of references to somebody named “Thad.” Finally my wife said, “Is your husband named Thad?” Yes, she said, he is. I’d only been calling him Clay for, oh, eight years or so.

I wonder why he didn’t correct me? But then again, I didn’t correct anybody at church, and the guy in the music store didn’t correct me. I guess we don’t want to embarrass people.

I used to work for a guy, now retired, who would always pass me in the hall and say, “Hey there, buddy.” I thought, wow, isn’t that nice, he’s the head of the whole department and he thinks of me as his buddy. What a friendly guy.

As a couple of years passed, though, I noticed that he only called me buddy, never Mark. So I figured either he thought my name WAS Buddy, or that I was so low on the totem pole that he didn’t feel the need to waste any energy learning my real name. Turns out the latter assumption was correct.

Whenever I answer the phone and somebody asks to speak with David Williams, I hang up, because it’s generally somebody looking to sell me something I don’t want or collect money I don’t have.

I don’t know what to do about getting my name right at church. It’s not a big church, and I’ve been a member there for four years. Maybe I should just wear a nametag.