morganphillipsland

Last week somebody put up a little photocopied sign on my apartment building’s front door:  BLOCK PARTY THIS SUNDAY.

At the bottom of the sign someone had scrawled a handwritten note: We get into trouble when we bbq.

I was away from the apartment all day on Sunday.  When I returned at 11pm there were random, broken knickknacks scattered around the sidewalk in front of my building.  Apparently the now-concluded festivities had included a garage sale.

Also, there was an unattended fire in a plastic garbage can.

I went inside to fill a spaghetti pot with water, and when I returned the Crazy Angry Lady from upstairs had already come out with her own pot.  I convinced her that I hadn’t set the fire and that she and I were on the same team, and she expressed her view that the fire was the fault of those people, because god knows where they come from, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if they’d just go back there.

I ignored her theory, and muttered something about how it is not a good idea to leave an unattended fire in a plastic garbage can in the middle of the sidewalk in a residential neighborhood.  Which really should go without saying, but apparently sometimes needs to be said.  Or possibly scrawled on the bottom of a BLOCK PARTY sign:

You will probably get into less trouble if you don’t leave any fires behind.

This story (and that moral) will be included in my upcoming motivational self-help book.  Except in that version I will call out the Crazy Angry Lady on her xenophobia, and she will have an ephiphany and apologize and offer me some of her famous apple cobbler.