Just Say No

In high school, my family moved to a suburban development with a lot of rules about aesthetics. House paint from a pre-approved color pallet. A certain number of flowering shrubs and trees per acre. No bass boats in the driveway (god forbid).

And the funny thing is, the neighbors followed these rules. I'm not entirely sure what the consequences would have been if my dad had parked his boat for the whole neighborhood to see. Flaming bag of poo flung at our door? It's not like the X-Files episode "Arcadia," in which Mulder and Scully go undercover in a hoity-toity planned community and find that an Ubermenscher kills residents when they break the neighborhood's Contracts, Covenants and Restrictions. (Yes, I can compare just about anything to an episode of the X-Files. Or Seinfeld.)

My urban neighborhood in DC has rules too. No parking pretty much ever without the express written permission of the mayor--that's a big one. Ignore it and incur the wrath of the DC parking police, the only effective branch of the city's government. The tennis court in the park just down the street has the Best Rules Ever, though. Two signs are posted on a fence surrounding the tennis court, both of which are noteworthy.

No drugs. OK, that's logical. No alcohol, OK. No weapons (besides my awesome serve, dude). Makes sense. No ... CAR REPAIRS? Huh? Really, has this been a problem in the past? What kind of car can fit through the three-foot-wide opening in the fence surrounding the tennis court? I would love to know the story behind this rule. I mean, presumably, someone at some point decided to fix up his car, and, you know, add some purple French tail lights and thirty inch fins, maybe. So, logically, he and his buddies ... pushed his car over to the tennis court?

The other sign suffers from two problems. Rule #5: I love that the sign specifies which drugs are not permitted. No smoking of marijuana. That's it. Feel free to hit the crack pipe or snort coke off a hooker's ass though. Rule #3: "Dogs Must Not Be Allowed to Be Curbed in Park." What kind of crazy ESL grammar is that? That's DOUBLE passive voice. Shudder. Also, isn't Rule #3 saying the opposite of what it means? From what I understand of the unnecessarily vague phrase "curb your dog," it means, "don't let your dog shit on the grass without cleaning it up." So, the rule is saying "Don't don't let your dog poop everywhere." Double negative double passive voice. My head just exploded.

While we are on the topic, I don't understand why DC (and I assume other cities) has "Curb Your Dog" signs everywhere. Really, who the hell knows what that means? I read that sign and think, "Huh, do they want me to take the dog to the actual concrete curb on the side of the street to poop? Isn't that grosser? Or do they want me to calm my dog down, as in, curb his enthusiasm? Just tell me what you want me to do!"