Louisiana Lady Sheds Light on Bad Neighbors
This is truly a woman after my own heart. It seems to me that when you grow up (or if you live in New York, when you can finally afford to live alone), your neighbors become the equivalent of roommates.
Hopefully, you get good neighbors who just want to borrow sugar or invite you to fun parties or pick up your newspaper for you when you go out of town. This would be the equivalent of roommates who do their dishes and help buy housegoods and aren’t always laying around on the couch in their robe watching bad TV.
Hopefully, you don’t get bad neighbors who let their dog poop in your yard or complain about the height of your fence or have rowdy kids that are always breaking your windows with stray baseballs. This would be the equivalent of roommates who borrow your things without asking and leave passive aggressive notes and decide to invite a strange dude to sleep over when your parents are staying with you for the weekend.
But if you DO get bad neighbors, instead of letting your dog poop in their yard or starting some epic turf war by over-analyzing the construction restrictions on that awesome new pool they’re building in their back yard, just give them the finger. In lights. On your roof. Year-round.
That’s what Sarah Childs of Baton Rouge, Louisiana did, and she’s currently fighting for her right to let their be light. After alleging that her neighbors harassed her and stole her dog, Childs constructed a giant F-U with Christmas lights on her roof and was then told by police she had to remove them or be arrested. With support from the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) of Louisiana, Childs has sued the city, its mayor and police for the threats she received from officers after refusing to take the lights down for good (she temporarily removed them twice, but they’ve since been reconstructed).
While Child’s case is still under investigation, I give her middle finger instillation two thumbs up for creativity, message effectiveness and general harmlessness.
Photo courtesy of Huffington Post
