Gladys Kravitz, that is. The impossibly nosy neighbour on Bewitched!
We have a few interesting characters on our street. There’s the Mason Jar lady across the road whose attempts to sell Mason Jars (with lids!) from her front lawn failed, as far as we know. There’s the guy whose every mention of his wife contains some explanation of how mean she is to him. There’s Mr. Familiarity who acts like we’re old friends and we don’t even know his name. And the nice, quiet couple with the beautiful dog they walked faithfully every morning and evening – but they moved away in the spring to be replaced by Mr. Social Activity.
This man has visitors every day. It’s always the same people so it’s not likely a crack house or anything like that. The same 3 or 4 huge pick-up trucks, often tugging trailers, drop by for…whatever. The problem is, his buddies park on our street which is a thoroughfare that becomes very busy during typical rush hours. And one of them in particular likes to park on the narrowest part of the road, facing traffic – in other words, in the wrong direction. This causes confusion, bottlenecks, and all sorts of trouble while the pick-up’s owner is inside the well-kept home, oblivious.
So I’ve taken it upon myself to teach this dude a lesson! At least a half dozen times I’ve called traffic dispatch to report the infraction but they’ve never made it in time to ticket him – until now. Yesterday they finally caught him and it was sweet – on behalf of all of the law-abiding motorists whose inconvenience he has caused – to see that ticket on his windshield. I hope it was a hefty fine, enough to remind him that this isn’t the wild west and certain behaviors are expected, like following the law and not deliberately messing up the afternoon drive for hundreds of people. And if he does it again, Gladys will be on the case, until the lesson finally sinks in.