OG of the C-D-S

We made a fun filled family trip to Dollywood this week, but more on that later. The way more exciting part of this week is that Jason came *thisclose* to getting in a real, bona fide fist fight! And there wasn't any alcohol involved! Anyone who knows Jason knows this statement is about as expected as saying "Paris Hilton got her PhD!", so this was really the talk of the week in this section of the cul-de-sac. Unfortunately, Jason's almost-fight was with our neighbor, who can best be described with a word that sounds a lot like "schmasshole" (see dad? No swearing!) I'll call him Fish for the sake of this story. Anyhow, we had come to a comfortable mutual dislike with Fish over the past several years- polite enough if we had to be, but typically preferring to avoid him entirely, which has been remarkably easy since Fish is pretty anti-social. (Save for him puking in our yard- AND BEER COOLER!- last year during a party because he has no concept of how to drink socially. I just threw that part out to be mean and petty, but it is entirely true.) Fish is one of those guys who you can happily ignore or toss off a very insincere "hey" to, and life moves on nicely. Once every few months he'll catch you of guard and try to be chatty, but it's so uncomfortable that it doesn't last more than a minute or two before the sneer creeps back onto one of our faces and we can return to ignoring each other. There's not even any actual animosity, he's just someone you can't bring yourself to like, and someone you can't bother wasting any energy on hating.


Jason was outside doing something or another when Fish comes storming into our yard bellowing about Aaron, who was very likely doing something horrid, but considering Fish has a horrid 6 year old of his own, you'd think there would be a mutual understanding of the awfulness of little boys that age, right? Wrong. The story isn't that exciting, the summary is: Fish thinks our kid sucks (which he frequently does), he thinks we don't ever do anything about it (which is summarily wrong), and he thinks his kid doesn't have any problems (which is *laughably* wrong). During this heated argument I looked out the window and saw Jason and Fish talking, and I figured it was just one of Fish's weird "friendly" outbursts, so I shuddered and said "blech- better Jason than me!", and didn't think anything about it until Jason came in shaking with anger. Looking back, I realized when I looked out the window, they were just a few inches from each other's faces, and they had that posture like male gorillas, with their shoulders thrown back and their chests puffed out, and I could hear them through the closed window they were talking so loudly. I'm kind of kicking myself for not realizing what was going on, and then going outside to throw some fuel on that fire. ('Cause I think Jason could have taken him. Also, I think Fish could really benefit from a Chuck Norris style roundhouse kick in the neck.)


Anyhow, it blew over because Jason's a grownup and not a hothead punk, and was willing to walk away even though Fish maintained til the end (and it went on for a while) that his kid is perfect and our kid belongs on Dante's 6th or 7th level. But it does speak volumes about how little it takes to produce some excitement here on the cul-de-sac! An *almost* fight gets a whole blog post, and was the talk of the neighbors later that day at the cul-de-sac Memorial Day picnic, which was SUPER fun and comfortable with Fish and all of our kids there. Unfortunately, we haven't seen a For Sale sign go up in Fish's yard over the past few days, so we're probably stuck with him as a neighbor for the forseeable future.


I'm sure that's one of those stories Jason and I will talk about for years because it's just so out of the norm for our lives, and our kids will roll their eyes and think what losers we are that we waste brain cells remembering something so utterly boring. Jason said "thank God it wasn't you he came up to. You would have gouged out his eyes while screaming every obscenity in the book" (and I like to think that's not true, although the obscenity part is probably accurate. How he married a hothead like me is beyond comprehension). So while part of me thinks it would have been totally cool to see Jason punch Fish, I think he's even more badass that he could have, but didn't.