Over the summer, new people moved into a house near us. (See lovely map below.) Construction began immediately on what appeared to be an entire additional house connected to the sprawling homestead they had just purchased. I'm not exaggerating at all. As a neighborhood off of the main road, we were clearly the prime location for parked work crew vehicles, construction equipment, quarry dump trucks (I don't know what half that shit was, I just know it was omnipresent and massive.) So that was fun, especially when the workers would eat their lunches and discard their chicken bones on the road for my dog to eat when we walked past. Let me tell you, there's nothing like sticking your hand halfway down a dog's throat to fish out a slimy chicken wing to finish a walk the right way. So thanks for that.
The construction has yet to cease, but they're valiantly not letting this fact affect their social life. One night, I returned to the house to see a 'valet parking' sign at the end of their driveway. "Hmm," I thought. "Interesting. I wonder where they're parking all the.... oh." As I began to turn onto my road, I saw. Both sides of our street were lined bumper to bumper with valet parked luxury sedans of varying absurd price, leaving a tiny conduit for me to carefully traverse to my house. The valets were zipping up and down in their little go-carts, shuttling the illustrious guests to the gala with nary a crystal-clad foot touching the dirty ground. Walking, after all, is for peons. We marveled at the sheer balls of the host’s decision to shanghai our private road for his personal use without even a note to give us a heads up, and briefly considered some sort of retaliatory action involving eggs and/or soap. We eventually just watched a movie or something. We’d make crappy revolutionaries.
A few weeks later, it was party time again. Several hours in, when our road was sufficiently clogged with cars, I called the police. Yeah, I did. Partly because if anyone who actually lived on the street had had the poor timing to have a heart attack or set their kitchen on fire, there would have been no possible way for an ambulance or fire truck to get through the narrow channel the valets had so thoughtfully left for us. I also called partly because I’d never called the cops on anyone before, and partly because I was feeling pissy and vindictive. I explained the situation, but I don’t know if it was ever followed up on. I don’t really know what I was expecting. Wait, yes I do. I wanted them to have to scramble to find parking for the cars, eventually allowing undersized twelve-year-old children to park the cars on their own front lawn, à la the film Father of the Bride. That’s what happened in my head, anyway. But imaginary retribution can only satisfy a girl for so long. For the next soirée, we have a plan of attack: as soon as we see the valet sign, we’re parking every car we have on the road, each approximately one car length apart. Our neighbors agreed to participate, and we have standing plans to invite people over for the additional vehicular volume and to eat popcorn while we relish the inevitable chaos. So for quite some time, that summed up our relationship with the Entitled Family – they use us as a parking lot, and we hate them with the fury of an endless procession of eternally burning suns.
AND NOW FOR THE EXCITING UPDATE!!!
A few days ago, there was a knock at our door. It was a woman bearing an apology for the parking shenanigans and an invitation to their holiday open house. And when I say ‘their,’ it’s because it’s a company party and this woman worked for the gracious host. I bet she didn’t know that glossing over her boss’s neighborly ineptitudes was included in her job description. Apparently, this guy part or mostly owns one of the most generically yet nefariously named corporations I’ve ever heard of. Seriously, I’m sort of mad that I won’t be able to use that name for an evil empire, should I ever obtain one. But anyway, I am so totally going, as are one of my sisters and my mom and some of our neighbors. It’s going to be awesome, I can just feel it.
FURTHER EXCITING UPDATE!!!
So I called to RSVP, naturally expecting to speak to the woman who had delivered our (shamefully last minute, according to Emily Post) invitation, because whatever evil plan she had botched to earn herself invitation delivery duty would surely also warrant RSVP duty. As it turns out, not so much. It was an RSVP hotline. 1-800-WeHaveTooManyFriendsToTakeTheirCallsPersonally. Wow. We’ve organized a small posse of neighbors to go, but we can’t decide if we should walk, or each drive separately and have our cars valet-parked on our street in front of our own houses and then be go-carted to the party. I think you know what I’ll be voting for.
