Yesterday was one of those rare March New Mexico days where it was just warm and not hot and the wind wasn't blowing at a speed that would cause a cow to blow pass your window. We took advantage and went out in the backyard to play in Sam's new sandbox and his little blow up swimming pool. While we were outside, the neighbor's extremely aggressive and obnoxious little dog come right up to our gate to bark at us and growl. My husband shooed him back into his yard but the dog kept coming back and snapping, growling and barking. Yes, in our yard. So we did what anyone would do. We called animal control. The neighbors weren't home in the middle of the morning on a weekday so there was really no other recourse unless we wanted to cut our fun short which we were not going to do for some stupid little dog. You better believe that they would have had hell to pay if that dog had attacked my son, especially if he had attacked my son in our yard. We had absolutely no reason not to call animal control. We didn't (and still don't) even know their names so obviously there was no cell or work number we could call and say, "Hey, your stupid, aggressive, needy-for-attention little dog is in our yard and hostile." Animal control came, chased the dog up the road and that's the last we heard of it until later that night. Around 8pm we were on our way home from picking up Sam at my mom's house. We knew something was up as soon as we turned the corner onto our street. The shitty dog neighbors and their next door neighbors (who also have shitty yappy dogs that get out all the time and bark even when you're no where near them) were all outside. Both sets of neighbors have school age kids, both sets of neighbors are rarely outside and when they are it's way after my kid is already in bed so there's really no common ground. As we pulled into our garage, before we were even fully out of our car, the neighbor who will from here on out be called Little Loca, came charging up our driveway in full on "I'm gonna kick your ass" mode.
Little Loca, she's down for Legends West. You better believe, ese. (Ok so this is not what Little Loca really looks like but I would guess that she probably did at some point in her life. It's like the old say goes "You can take the girl out of the hood, but you can't take the hood out of the girl.")
This is like one of those experiences you have when you go to public school in a bad part of, in my case, the state (it is debatable whether or not the entire state of New Mexico can be considered the bad part of the state but then you have places like Santa Fe with all the celebrities and artists and over priced real estate that just screw this whole scenario up). I was jumped in 7th grade by a group of girls who sounded not unlike Little Loca. Except in 7th grade, they were unlikely to call me a fat bitch (I wasn't fat at this point in my life, it's actually debatable whether or not I'm fat now, but I digress). More than likely those bullies called me a slut or something along those lines. I honestly don't remember. In that case, the physical altercation was one sided. I let them beat me up which really just resulted in some pulled hair and a couple of bruises (none of which were on my face). The girls that jumped me really didn't put any heart into. In a case of 5 on 1, they probably could have done a good bit of damage but they didn't. It's like they didn't actually want to do it but they were all probably egging each other on as 7th graders will do.
In this case however, you're talking about moms in what's essentially a suburb in their late 20s with kids (infants and toddlers alike) standing by and husbands (well mine anyway) trying to diffuse the situation. Let me set this scene up a little more clearly, we live at the end of a cul-de-sac. We all drive SUVs or mid-size cars which are parked inside our open two car garages, there's kids playing basketball outside. Can you see it? Are you grasping the ridiculousness of this altercation? Both of us are holding babies, both of us are wearing denim capris. Both of us have our brown hair tied back in pony tails. Both of us are Hispanic. My eyebrows are drawn on with a pencil but it's not a Sharpie and I don't shave them off and then draw them on so that hardly qualifies as part of my hidden chola mystique. Perhaps if I had been wearing black liquid eyeliner and some brown lipliner, but I wasn't. As far as I could tell, Little Loca wasn't wearing any makeup. Not surprising; given, you know, that we're moms, in a well to do neighborhood with small children. Here are some more photos I've Googled to help illustrate my point.
Little Loca continued to yell insults and, yes, I hurled some of my own right back at her. I'm not proud of that but I am only human and being totally blindsided by the severity of this attack, there wasn't much time to think about taking the higher road. She eventually shut up, but didn't calm down. I eventually realized that provoking her wasn't going to solve the problem. Her husband, though not able to actually do anything about her intense, psychotic rage was able to shut her up long enough to actually have a semi adult conversation with the rest of those present; Little Loca was mad dogging me the whole time. In case you don't know what mad dogging is (if you've never seen Mi Vida Loca) it's basically a stare down, you know, an intimidation tactic. I'm not easily intimidated by the human equivalent of an aggressive, stupid, yapping little dog so her attempts to get me quaking in my boots were futile at best (I'm not easily intimidated by anyone except those that I consider intellectually superior to me. My former professors, experts in my field. You know, educated people. Not surprising since, according to Little Loca, I must not be educated because I am at home most of the time.)
The whole stupid thing ended with her husband saying that the dog would never get out again and him ushering her inside quickly and without ceremony. We stayed outside talking to the other neighbor about his yapping dogs and explaining that his dogs get so wound up when we're outside that there have been times that one or the other of them has actually gotten stuck in the fence or wrapped up in it's chain, which is an unsafe situation for any dog to be in for an indeterminate amount of time. He seemed ok with it. Or as ok as you can be when someone is telling you that you suck as a pet owner because you never trained your dogs and they lack attention because you're never home so they get themselves into dangerous situations because the people whole live across the street are outside in their yard. We also had the opportunity to meet another neighbor was 100% not psychotic and was surprised at the aggressiveness of Little Loca because, although they've been neighbors for years, he'd never actually interacted with her. The other surprising little tidbit about her hostility and her threats is that we live in a neighborhood that is saturated with law enforcement (my husband included although unfortunately, he doesn't get to bring a marked car home). Little Loca didn't seem to process this. And since she had already decided that I am uneducated and fat and my husband is "retarded" (a word I loathe because I believe that only truly ignorant and stupid people use it as an insult) she didn't give a second thought to how we could afford to live in this neighborhood. Oh and speaking of chicken shits, she never gave us her name. Her husband offered up their first name but not their last and never offered up her name either. Since she didn't give us her name, I had no choice but to make an appropriate one up for the purposes of this blog post. Admittedly, last night was a rough night. When you're dealing with someone who has no control over their emotions, it's nearly impossible to predict what they are going to do. We did call dispatch and some police officers came over to make a report so there's documentation of what happened in case Little Loca does decide to make good on her threats. Besides the adrenaline rush which took quite a while to come down from, we we also on edge because my son's bedroom is in the front of the house and ours is in the back. So presumably, if she were to actually try anything stupid, it would have been my toddler that took the brunt of it. Today, we rest. Tomorrow, we are having a security system installed and the day after that, who knows? I hope this is the last I hear from Little Loca. I'm not the type to hold a grudge but I'm also not "uneducated" enough to try to reason with an aggressive, stupid, yapping chola.
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