I have never really ever been one of those people - the people that think that their neighbourhood, their street, their community was too esteemed, or affluent to have 'those kinds of people' in their midst. Part of my childhood was spent in a place that was so much like Pleasantville that I nearly choked on the sugary goodness everyday.
I STILL never thought that I was ever going to be a Nimby-person.
Until a couple of weeks ago, when our street woke up to this.
See that pink house? It is directly across the street from me. They had JUST finished painting the exterior of the house about two days before they were vandalised.
What does this have to do with NIMBY? Well, the perpetrators of this heinous crime live three doors away from me. In a group home.Oh, sure, we knew about it. I figured live and let live. After all, I have no idea why any of the kids are there. Sometimes, circumstances beyond your control can send you spiralling and you end up somewhere that you never thought that you would be.
The kids started hanging out on the church steps, next door to us. One night, one of them slept on the church doorstep, much to my discontent. Still, we let them be.
Look what happens when we 'let them be.'
The worst part of this whole thing is that the church next to us was hit. Bad. Jessica and I cleaned the blue spray paint from the windows, but there was a big, bold R.I.P. Biggie Smalls blasted across the new stone steps.
Some of the mostly elderly congregation were afraid that a real gang was involved. All of the houses hit have had to recover from this with NO help from the jerks that are responsible. You know how I know that the group home kids did it?
Two reasons.
One kid was caught wearing a paint stained shirt when the police came, and
they kids were forced to apologize to the church members that were cleaning up the mess.
Mind you, they have not spoken one word to any of the other neighbours that have to use their own resources to take care of this mess, and they have not even offered to help anyone with the restoration.
So, am I a Nimby now?
On my street?
You bet.
