Charlotte and I watched "Little Women" yesterday (the Winona Ryder version) as Carey and I are taking her and Sarah to see the play at the K.C. when they get here, and Charlotte didn't know the story. Fortunately, she liked it very much.
After we had finished and had a cup of Earl Gray, we went to Moto Photo to pick up flower pictures (see samples below). When we got back we ran into Bill, just returning from Home Depot with a new ladder, and were chatting with him from across the street, when a car came barreling down Jocelyn WAY too fast. This is not an unusual occurrence and it makes Bill see red. He dropped the ladder, literally jumped backwards to land in front of the car's right front fender and screamed at the driver to slow down, "SLOW DOWN! ! You son of a bitch!! There are children who live on this street!" He shouted more to that effect, as the guy came to the proverbial screeching halt, backed up and jammed on his emergency break, not sure why. I THINK he was getting ready to get out of the car to attack Bill.
But before he could, Jim flew out of our house right up to the kid's face in his car window, issuing similar kinds of statements and warnings. The kid got belligerent, and I became concerned that Jim was going to drag him right through the car window and beat the tar out of him. So I kept saying, "Call the police, call the police" as I was trying to go into the house to do that and keep an eye on the situation at the same time.
Fortunately, and as luck would have it, Marnie's husband, Justin, who is a policeman in Charlottesville, had come up with her to visit Cindy for the week-end. He came out of her house, gun and all (yikes!) to see what all the commotion was and then took over, as several other neighborhood males began to congregate at, dare I say "swarm?" the scene.
Before it ended, the kid had had to back his car up, get out, listen to all the ways in which his behavior was both illegal and thoughtless, and why it was just plain laughable that he thought HE could sue Bill, and he had to leave the car there and walk home. On top of it all, Justin had found a beer in his car. He told the boy he couldn't pick up the car until after dark. Apparently, his parents were at a Nats game.
The car was still there when we got back from dinner at Maggiano's last night and still there when I went to bed at 10, and I'm not sure, but I think it might still be there now. A lot of cars look alike to me, so I'm not entirely sure.
Cars speeding down our a little one way street has been an ongoing problem for years. Charley Lauren almost got hit one time several years ago when she started to dart across the street as someone came racing down. I'm not sure why we've never done anything more proactive about it, probably because no one has yet actually gotten hurt, but I've floated the idea of investigating speed bumps with Anja and Bill, so we'll see if they are interested.
Anyhow, WHEW! That was way more excitement than we needed on our normally quiet, I would go so far as to say sleepy, little street on a late lazy Saturday afternoon. I hope it's the last of it.
