Nix Bits

Last week we got a little note on our car asking us to please not park in front of a certain house. Now under normal, Pre-K, conditions this sort of thing would probably be amusing more than anything else. Of course, that never happened in our mid-city neighborhood where street parking is(was?) at least as difficult as it is in our current Uptown digs.

But this is post-K and things are different. And raw emotions are much closer to the surface. See, this note came just two days after we got ripped off by a shoring contractor. It came a week after one of my brother’s friends was killed by a shotgun blast to the chest in the Marigny. It came the day after someone was robbed at gunpoint just across the street from our current apartment (and this person’s house, as well). It came the same day that the US Amry Corps of Engineers announced that, oops, we need another 6 billion dollars to protect the region so we’re going to have to hold up flood maps yet again. It came after we saw the utter lack of progress made on our little house by our General contractor.

I should note that the person who left the little nastygram is not elderly or handicapped. She looks to be about the same age as us and healthy. Not that we’ve met her of course, but I’ve seen her going in and out of her perfect little undamaged and unblemished house. Walking more that five measly feet on occasion won’t kill this lady.

Then came the icing on the cake one week later. She had the audacity to leave yet another note on our car the following week. No, it was not to chastise us for parking in front of her home. It was to thank us for not doing so. See, this is not our neighborhood. It is a temporary home that we feel lucky and grateful to have but it is not our house. Thus, this is not our neighborhood. As renters, we’re going to suck it up, keep our heads down, and quietly live our life until we can get everything put back together again. You know, like 80% of the rest of New Orleans.

And it’s wasn’t just any note either. She bought it and packaged it in a little envelope. She thought about it because the note she bought had a picture of a woman walking a pug on it. You know, like our little pug. I mean, Wow.

But wait, you say, she couldn’t possibly know you guys were going through all that.

Nope. That’s no excuse. She lives here in the sliver-by-the-river surrounded by miles of flooded out devastation. She gets the same paper as we do and watches the same local news. She even had a citizens for 1 greater New Orleans sign in her yard for a while though I suppose it messed up those perfect little hedges and had to go. When people in other parts of New Orleans make broad generalizations about clueless Uptownites, they’re thinking about this lady.

I can understand this from someone who doesn’t live here and you haven’t seen it all with their own eyes. Out of sight, out of mind, after all. It’s not right, of course, but I can make some sense of that. But to be here and be so utterly clueless and self absorbed. It’s symptomatic of an all too prevalent attitude: “Well, yes, that’s terrible and I really feel for you but you’re messing up my view and cramping my style.”

Although I can understand that feeling from someone outside of here, I certainly don’t condone it. While there are certainly a great many Americans down here in the muck with the rest of us working and helping and caring, it feels like there are so many more with this attitude instead. And it’s this attitude that allows people to believe the lie that we are ten feet below sea level and should just all move away. It’s this sort of benign neglect that will let this city whither and die. “Gee, that’s so sad but really those people shouldn’t have lived down there anyway. I’m sure their lives are better now. I read somewhere that that city was on such a downward slide anyway. It’s probably all for the best, really.”

And that is why, for my own sake and sanity and personal therapy reasons, that I posted it here in a fit of utter passive aggression. At least you have a house you’re unable to park in front of you jerk.

If you can’t get mad, get even. And if you can’t get even, just whine about it on the Internet for all to see.

Linkage:

• We are Not OK – We most certainly not OK. Not yet. Not by a long shot.
• Reciprocal Humanity – A post with a similar theme
• Houstonians Evacuee Weary – from the Houston Chronicle. Yeah, well join the club and stop trying to blame us for your problems.
• We Export More Than That