I did some checking. Wanna know why nobody likes to deliver to my 'hood? A pizza delivery lady was sexually assaulted, beaten and mugged here just over a year ago. Goddammit! Of course I'd heard of it, but I didn't realize it was my specific new neighborhood that it happened in. Also? A cop was shot and killed here around the same time. Also again? Our particular neighborhood in a really classy, upper-middle class section of St. Louis has always had a bad rep. I grew up several miles from here, how the hell was I supposed to know that?
We thought we'd done all the checking we needed to. The average income is about the same as ours, the crime stats were about the same as the area I lived in for over eight years. We never thought to ask if any cops had been murdered in the area.
But wait, that's not all! We've dealt with many minor indignities that lead us to believe that there's still a general "I don't give a fuck about anybody else" attitude around. People (adults even!) constantly walk through our yard. At 1am on July 5, actually, we were getting home from some festivities and unloading FI-ance's car. A guy about 20-25 years old walked past us. FI-ance said "good evening." Do you know that punk ass bitch didn't even look at FI-ance? He put his head down, said nothing, walked through our yard with us standing there watching him and then jumped our back fence! Shit, people! Things like this is why FI-ance has left the poison ivy on the fence. I hope that man now has poison ivy burns on his ballsack.
That same week we had our cars keyed (FI-ance has only had his since February). We've had to deal with "the yardbirds", a group of party people who for some reason need to blast music at all hours, stand in the front yard next to us, take up our parking spaces (we don't have a garage), argue and curse loudly and then leave their beer bottles on our lawn. People throw trash in our yard. Somebody chewed food and then spit globs of it all over my car. (I had to drive to work like that!) People are constantly stopping their cars in the middle of the street to talk to folks on the sidewalk, or worse, in another car, so you can't even get around them if you want to. Kids refuse to use the sidewalk. Whole huge groups of them walk the streets, and when you give them dirty looks when they won't get out of the way they look at you like you've done something stupid, wrong and unnecessary. Random guys stand around on random corners looking like they've got nothing to do. Come on, people. This is how pizza ladies get raped...Let's move it along, Johnny.
I think that ridiculous list pretty much covers it. We don't know how much of this we can stand, so we're already looking at houses online. The trick will be trying to sell our little home that needs a bit of work when brand new places won't sell. FI-ance and I are a bit beside ourselves with disappointment, anger and incredulity. This is some fine mess we've gotten ourselves into.
In addition? We may need to move instead of having a wedding next year. Lovely. Thanks, cop-killing assholes*.
(*They did catch all the major criminals, by the way. But...still.)
