I Quit! Again!

Meet the Husband….

Last night I decided to resign as the secretary for our neighborhood association. This is the second time that I have quit the dang group as I was once the president (because no one else wanted to be). After my first term I not only resigned, but I quit attending meetings or participating at all. I was fed up with listening to the whining and ugliness spewed by neighbors who have no interest in helping to make the neighborhood cleaner or cuter or funner. Their only objective in attending the few meetings that they bothered to show up to was to bitch about some positive change to the neighborhood that was being discussed. These people would veil their concerns with practical sounding reasons like additional traffic or environmental fears, but always lurking behind their malarky was fear of change or racism or basic selfishness. Old fucks who want things to be good for them but not for others. I couldn’t take it anymore and I didn’t want to spend any more time with these people. I definitely didn’t want to give up my time to provide a venue for shitty people to say shitty things.

I was much happier not being involved, and I didn’t miss the drama or having to argue with bigots. But guilt overtook me when eighteen months later the new president (Suse calls her Madame President in her posts) asked me to come back and help her gain control of the association from the bad people who had seized power and run rampant in my absence. She was working very hard to get new neighborhood activities started (like the movie in the park night that Suse has mentioned) and to get the city to provide us with more resources for general neighborhood improvement. But “the bad man” (also referenced in previous posts) and his cronies were blocking her at every step and did everything they could to ensure that the association did nothing.

Stupid guilt won, and I agreed to come back. It took the rest of the year, but after Madame President’s husband joined we got things turned in the right direction. After Suse joined the following year, we locked down full control and Suse put the haters in their place. Unfortunately, she was not in attendance at last night’s meeting because she is currently enrolled in our city’s leadership academy which meets on the same night.

Suse here: perhaps we are way too involved? Lol!

I knew the meeting would be a rough one because the only topic of discussion was adding lights to the basketball and tennis courts in our neighborhood park. One of the guys on the association board who lives across the street from the park plays tennis and he got the city to agree to add lights that would be on until 9pm when the park closes. Winter and spring in Fort Lauderdale provide great mild temperatures in the evening and this dude just wanted to play tennis in the nice weather but couldn’t because the sun goes down a bit after 6pm.

Sounds simple, right? Shouldn’t be a big deal for anyone.

Not in our neighborhood.

The bad man kicked up a general alert to our shittiest neighbors who showed up to the meeting en masse. Keep in mind that I had never seen most of these people before ever. I did recognize the same piece of shit who talked about his racist fears at the previous meeting when the lights were first brought up and a whiny old man who lives by the park and attend meetings regularly to complain about anyone doing anything in the park. I believe he feels that the park is his.

The whole scene gave me flashbacks to my time as president and I was feeling tense. The shit-heads started with veiled concerns as they always do and I calmly responded to each when it was my turn to speak.

They broke out all of the classics: concerns about parking, concerns about “light pollution” (even though the lights would shut off automatically at 9pm), concerns about over use of the park, and concerns about better uses for the money that the parks department earmarked for the court lights.

Then it started getting ugly. They mentioned how they have lived in the neighborhood much longer than us and could remember when the park was full of prostitutes and dangerous “basketball players.” These people were worried that adding lights to the courts would bring crime and dangerous elements (you’d think a lit up park wouldn’t be ideal for that sort of thing). No one had directly mentioned race yet, but the truth was starting to come out.

Suse again: I have found used condoms in that playground….

A person then mentioned possibly adding lights to the tennis courts only, to which I asked why they would be okay with lights for tennis but not for basketball. That’s when a dude who had so far sat silently with his arms crossed and an unpleasant look on his face couldn’t take it anymore.

He stood up and said, “Basketball courts have a different clientele than tennis courts and we don’t want them.” Bingo! There it was.

This “make america great again” mother fucker actually had the balls to be blatantly racist in front of a large group of people which included neighbors who are black. I then lost my shit and over reached my authority and stood and declared that the meeting was over. I grabbed the left over wine and headed out the door. I could see that poor Madame President was being yelled at by some mean old lady, and the racists were gathering out in the park to discuss racist things, I assume.

I was stopped by the whiny old man who was upset with me and asked if we could talk. (He had a right to be upset with me because I had told him during the meeting that he should move out of the neighborhood.) I was steaming mad at this point, so I told him that I had heard enough of his whining for one night, and walked away before I did something bad.

Later, Suse got home from her leadership academy meeting and we drank too much wine to blow off the steam and I called Madame President to tell her that I was done.

Suse mentioned (and I am sure that you might be thinking the same thing) that by quitting, that I am letting the bad people win. I want to clarify that I will continue to fight against these people and will help with neighborhood initiatives. But I’m the secretary of the association and I no longer want to be the putz who has to take notes on all of the shitty things our shitty neighbors say.

I’m not really sure how to end my rant except to say that it’s really sad that we live in an America where once again racists feel emboldened to champion their shitty causes without any shame. Younger than millennials generation, we are counting on you!

Last thing: hate speech is protected. But we don’t have to give them a forum….